





* v*v 









FIELD TACTICS 

FOR SALESMEN 


A Review of Actual Plans and Methods Successfully Used 
by Salesmen in All Lines of Business to Organize a 
Territory, Handle Balky Buyers, Meet Common 
Objections and Conserve Time 



By JoTVASPLEY 

Editor , “Sales Management ” Magazine; Author , 11 Salesman’s 
Correspondence Manual”, “ What a Salesman Should 
Know About Credits” and other Books 
for Salesmen 



POCKET EDITION 




Published by 

THE DARTNELL CORPORATION 


223 West Jackson Boulevard 
Chicago, III. 


All privileges of reproducing 
illustrations or letter press 
expressly reserved by the 
publishers 



Copyright 1920 by 


J. C. ASPLEY 



Chicago 


©Ct A 5 619 7 7 









HIS MANUAL should not be confused with 



the multitude of books on the market which 


modestly claim to teach anyone how to sell 
goods. “Field Tactics” is in no sense a text-book 
on salesmanship. It does not concern itself with 
either the “psychology” or the “theory” of sell¬ 
ing. It deals only with the practical work-a-day 
problems which every salesman is constantly 
called upon to meet and solve. It cannot tell you 
how to solve all your tactical problems, but it 
does tell you how other salesmen are solving sim¬ 
ilar problems and overcoming similar obstacles. 

Not all the methods and plans suggested in 
these pages will be of immediate interest to you. 
Some of them will seem far removed from the 
cos ditions under which you are at present work- 
5r. g. But we sincerely believe that any salesman, 
, matter how successful he may be or how much 
money he is making, will get many fresh view¬ 
points, a few valuable ideas, and considerable 
stimulation by studying the methods used by 
other successful salesmen. If nothing more, 
they will stimulate original thinking and broaden 
your point of view. 

The suggestions represent picked experiences 
of the most successful salesmen and sales man¬ 
agers in over two hundred and fifty lines of busi¬ 
ness. Some of them have been selected from 
sales manuals issued by concerns such as The 


National Cash Register Company, The Alpha 
Portland Cement Company, Beckett Paper Com¬ 
pany, Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company, 
Federal Electric Sign Company, Quaker Oats 
Company, Street Railways Advertising Company, 
etc. Some of the plans have already appeared 
in weekly news bulletins furnished subscribers to 
the Dartnell Monthly Sales Service. Others have 
been found in house organs like The Addresso- 
grapher, The Palmolive News, The Protecto- 
graph Weekly Bulletin, etc. In the aggregate 
they comprise the most helpful collection of tact¬ 
ical plans for salesmen ever published in one 
volume. 

Anyone who will study and apply the meth¬ 
ods suggested in this Manual will become a better 
salesman and a bigger money maker for himself 
and for his house. They represent experiences 
which have cost other salesmen much time and 
money to acquire. But it is not enough to read 
about these methods of other successful men— 
the best selling idea ever conceived is worthless 
unless you put it to work. 


PART ONE 


Territory Analysis 

I—Getting the Most Out of a Territory 

II—Working a Metropolitan Territory. 

III— Working a Provincial Territory. 

IV— Knowing a Territory Too Well. 



ALL works of taste must bear a price in 
proportion to the skill, time, expense and 
risk attending their invention and manufac¬ 
tureThose things called dear, are, when 
justly estimated, the cheapest. They are 
attended with much less profit to the artist 
than those which everybody calls cheap. A 
disposition for cheapness and not for excel¬ 
lence of workmanship is the most frequent 
and certain cause of the decay and destruc¬ 
tion of arts and manufactures. 


• Ruskin. 






I—Getting the Most Out of a 
Territory 

Any salesman can make more money if he 
wants to. All he has to do is to plan his work 
so that he will spend more time face to face 
with buyers. Sales statistics prove, beyond the 
shadow of a doubt, that the more time you spend 
in the presence of buyers the more you sell. 

When the National Cash Register Company 
opened up in Sweden, Johan Sande covered the 
whole country. Now Sweden is a small country, 
much smaller than one of our Western states but 
very thickly populated. From the outset Sande 
did well. But he did not make a big success until 
he awoke to the fact that he was spending too 
much time traveling instead of selling. He asked 
that his territory be cut down. It was. Now 
there are eight agents in Sweden and each of 
these eight men is making more money from one- 
eighth of Sande’s original territory than Sande 
used to make out of the whole! 

There is in the employ of Heath & Milligan, 
one of Chicago’s oldest paint manufacturers, a 
veteran salesman who has been with the com¬ 
pany fifteen years. He has a choice territory in 
the Middle West, a territory which produced 
$16,782 worth of business for the nine months 
ending September, 1918. It was suggested to 

7 


FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


this salesman that he could make more money 
on a smaller territory. He could not see it that 
way at all, but was willing to try anything once. 
So his territory was cut in half. For the same 
period last year (1919) the territory produced 
$36,940 worth of business, more than twice the 
1918 volume, and the bulk of this business was 
secured by this salesman whose earnings were 
almost double . 

More Money With Smaller Territories 

In the same way the Baker-Vawter Com¬ 
pany recently reduced the size of many of its 
sales territories, in some cases putting as many 
as two and three salesmen on what was once one 
man's stamping ground. In practically every 
case each of the new men made more money on 
a fraction of the territory than one man used to 
make on the whole. 

Finch, Van Slyck & McConville, a St. Paul 
dry goods house, followed the same plan with 
equally good results, so far as the earnings of 
the men were concerned. One salesman, who 
made an awful howl when his territory was cut 
in half, earned forty per cent more money during 
the first six months of 1919 out of one-half his 
territory than he earned in 1918 out of his whole 
territory. 

It stands to reason that a salesman who 


8 




GETTING THE MOST OUT OF A TERRITORY 


spends the time hop skipping over too large a 
territory, is working under a serious handicap. 
If his territory were smaller he could devote 


Statistic* Showing Salei-Increases Resulting from Territorial Redactions 

RECORD MADE BY REXAU. REPRESENTATIVE W. D FEE 

NOTE:—Mr. Foe entered the employ of tbe United Drug Company. January *9. 1#11. when he was assigned to a 
territory comprising North Dakota. Sooth Dakota. Montana, part of Idaho, and Eastern Washington Mr 
Fee's territory no* includes thr'single state of Minnesota, and that is to be further sub-divided, with his gleeful 
acquiescence — B I S 

Ywar EnJtog Ttrttfy Safe Im OWIlrf 

July let. Dll North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, part of Idaho. Eastern Washington 

f* months) —---—-—-. - 524.ST2.87 

July 1st, 1912 North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, part of Idaho, Eastern Washington 72,615.00 
July 1st. 1913 North Dakota. South Dakota, Montana, part of Idaho. Eastern Washington 71,272.00 


July' 1st. 1914 Minnaaoto and North -. . , - 11.42C.00 

July 1st, Ills Minnesota and North r>«W.. ... ~- r .. — - — S3.SS8.00 

Doc. Slat, 1914 Minnaaoto ~.. . . . - 88,441.00 

Dae. Slat, 1917 «■'-- , — —-- 9S.1SS.00 

Dec. 31st, till m:-- -- ' - _.—_ _ 108,958.00 


What One Salesman Did with a Smaller Territory 

more time to his customers, and the time he now 
spends on trains and street cars could be spent 
in the actual presence of buyers. 

To make the most money out of a territory 
you should know exactly how much business it is 
capable of yielding. Most salesmen have the idea 
that when they show a nice increase over last 
year’s sales they are entitled to much credit. 
Beating last year’s figures is a creditable per¬ 
formance. It at least shows progress. But the 
only real test of success in selling is this: How 
much of the available business are you getting? 


9 













FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


In most lines of business some sort of a yard 
stick is used for gauging the work of a salesman. 
Sometimes the salesman is told what that meas¬ 
urement is, as in cases where a quota is fixed for 
each territory, but more often these figures are 
kept secret and are only known to a few officials 
of the company. In either case, however, you 
should for your own satisfaction appraise the 
value of your territory so that you may know 
how good a salesman you are or are not. 

How to Appraise a Territory 

There are several ways of doing this, some 
quite simple. A shoe salesman, for example, 
knows that the average person buys two pairs of 
shoes a year. By finding the population, and 
multiplying that figure by two, he knows pretty 
nearly to a pair how many pairs of shoes will be 
sold in his territory during the next year, and he 
can thus decide upon a figure which should rep¬ 
resent his share of that business. In other lines 
an arbitrary figure is used to represent the per- 
capita purchases of the population. Thus the 
Ingersoll watch people figured they ought to sell 
$10 worth of watches for every hundred people 
in a territory. However, they soon left that 
figure behind. 

In selling a specialty, like calculating ma¬ 
chines or typewriters, the buying possibilities of 
10 




GETTING THE MOST OUT OF A TERRITORY 


a territory can be finely appraised. The Bur¬ 
roughs Adding Machine salesman knows down 
to a few machines just what he can do. In the 
same way the salesmen for the Free Sewing Ma¬ 
chine Company make up a list of towns in every 
county in their territory. Opposite each town 
they list the stores which could logically sell Free 
sewing machines. In' another column they set 
down the stores which do sell their machines. 
The difference between the two lists gives each 
man an accurate idea of the business he is miss¬ 
ing. With such a tabulation before him, he can 
plan his work so that he can get a larger share 
of this business with the least waste of effort. 

No matter what you sell—whether it is 
safety pins or fire engines—you should realize 
that your territory is a battle ground. Good 
generalship calls for knowing every nook and 
corner, every uncovered opportunity, every twist 
and turn. A general who would go into battle 
without an intimate knowledge of the battle field 
would be doomed before the zero hour arrived. 
So it is with a salesman. The measure of his 
success—which is but another way of saying the 
sum total of his earnings—hinges on his ability 
to make his territory work for him, instead of 
him working for his territory, as is too often the 
case. Knowing your territory is second only in 
importance to knowing your line. 

11 




II—Working a Metropolitan 
Territory 

A well-known sales manager tells of an 
experience some years ago that taught him a 
valuable lesson. “I was at one time working as 
one of a group of fifteen or more salesmen in a 
western city. One of the men in this group was 
getting about twice as much business as any of 
the balance of us. I had a deep-seated convic¬ 
tion that he was not a better salesman than other 
men in this particular group. His larger volume 
of production became a matter of much concern 
to me. I found that he was pursuing this simple 
program: He was following smokestacks . He 
had found by experience that wherever there was 
a smokestack, there was business, and he was 
working outside the beaten paths. He was work¬ 
ing the outlying districts, and I think it is a mat¬ 
ter of record that he never failed to get business 
where he found a busy smokestack. By this 
method of procedure he found live prospects 
and, as a rule, virgin prospects—men not solic¬ 
ited by others who were following the stereotyped 
routine of sticking around congested centers or 
within easy radius of their hotel. In other words, 
he employed his initiative in unearthing and 
developing sources of business almost entirely 
overlooked or passed up by others.” 


12 


WORKING A METROPOLITAN TERRITORY 


Every salesman has his own way of working 
a city territory—some of which are good and 
others not so good. The following suggestions 
have been secured from notably successful sales¬ 
men in varied lines of business, and are offered 
to you to assist you in the construction of a sales 
plan which will be peculiarly your own. Some 
of the suggestions may be far removed from your 
problems, and seemingly foreign to your needs, 
but most of them hold thoughts which can be 
whittled down a bit and repainted, to serve your 
purpose. 

Get Acquainted With Your Territory 

A salesman who for many years led an 
organization of dictionary salesmen, and who 
worked almost exclusively in the big cities, found 
the local newspaper office a valuable source of 
information in getting a line on his territory. 
He frequently found the newspaper's advertising 
department had literature that showed just what 
districts of the city offered the best opportunity 
for him. Salesmen selling the trade will find 
the newspapers, in many instances, have ready¬ 
made “route lists" which contain very helpful 
information. While these lists are prepared to 
assist the salesmen of concerns advertising in 
their columns and are not for general distribu- 


13 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


tion, the non-advertisers’ salesmen will usually 
be able to secure them by the use of a little 
diplomacy. 

Laying Out Territory in Blocks 

Having secured a general working idea of 
conditions as they exist in the territory, the next 
step is to divide it up into working sections or 
blocks. In recommending the “block” plan for 
working metropolitan territory to its salesmen, 
the Baker-Vawter Company says: “Within sixty 
days after opening up a city territory the sales¬ 
man should know enough about it to lay it 
out into sections for convenient and intensive 
working. There may be from ten to twenty-five 
sections in a territory according to street-car 
facilities, grouping by industries, etc. A city 
map should be used in arranging the sections. 
Each section should be carefully outlined on the 
map, and the map kept in a conspicuous place.” 

Most cities have directories that will be of 
considerable assistance to you in blocking out a 
territory to the best advantage. In Chicago, and 
other large cities, there are what are known as 
building directories. These show the names and 
business occupation of men and concerns in the 
large office buildings. Another valuable direc¬ 
tory, published in some of the larger cities, is the 

14 




WORKING A METROPOLITAN TERRITORY 


telephone directory which groups its telephone 
users by exchanges, making a source of very val¬ 
uable information. The blue books published in 
most large cities may also be of service. In sell¬ 
ing by classes, you will sometimes find that direc¬ 
tories of local buyers may be secured. These, as 
a rule, are published by some trade paper, the 
Directory of Dry Goods Buyers published by the 
Dry Goodsman of St. Louis being a typical ex¬ 
ample. License lists of dealers which sometimes 
can be secured in printed form from city or state 
officials, mercantile rating books on file at the 
bank, and classified directories put out by local 
commercial associations also offer good material 
for blocking out a territory. 

Keep Record of Every Call 

If the service or article being sold is one 
that requires several call-backs before the sale is 
made, such as advertising, a household or office 
appliance, or something sold to manufacturers, 
it is very important that you keep a private card 
record of calls for your own information. Stock 
cards, 3x5 inches in size, may be secured at any 
office supply store for this purpose. These cards 
should show the essential items of information, 
such as the buyer's name, best time to find him 
in, result of previous calls, etc. These cards 
15 





FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


should be filed by blocks, and address, instead of 
alphabetically. For instance, the cards for all 
the prospects in the Woolworth Building, New 
York, will be filed together, with the highest room 
number on top. Being filed in this way all you 
have to do is to go to your file each morning, pick 
out the cards for the block or section you intend 
working that day, and you have them all to¬ 
gether, arranged to order of call. 

Laying Out the Day*s Work 

If it has been your habit to come down to 
work and then decide whom you would call on 
that morning, hit-or-miss fashion, you will not 
see much good in going through so much red tape. 
Like most salesmen you probably fight shy of 
anything that resembles detail work. But the 
writer has demonstrated to his own satisfaction 
in selling advertising that fully half again as 
much business can be secured by following the 
foregoing plan than by the “grab-bag” plan, as 
one sales manager calls it. While it would seem 
that best results would result from selecting one 
or two prospects who you think are “good bets” 
and concentrating on them, the fact is that in the 
long run you lose out doing this. You may force 
a few sales that way, but bigger and by far more 
profitable results will be obtained through sys- 
16 




WORKING A METROPOLITAN TERRITORY 


tematically working up a large number of pros¬ 
pects as outlined above. 

The hours available for soliciting are short 
at best, so the wise salesman will plan to make 
the very most out of every day. There is an old 
superstition common among some salesmen that 
they cannot call upon a prospect until he has had 
a chance to open his mail. A salesman who tells 
you this simply acknowledges that he is either 
ignorant or lazy. There is some excuse for a 
salesman starting late when he is doing cold can¬ 
vass work among business executives, and has no 
advance knowledge of the man’s office habits, but 
after he has been over his territory his card rec¬ 
ords should show what time each prospect comes 
down to work, and he will invariably learn that 
out of twenty-five or thirty prospects in a certain 
block, there will be one or two who get down at 
eight o’clock—especially in warm weather. 

Getting an Early Start 

It is a decided advantage to a salesman if 
he can get an interview with a man early in the 
morning, because at that time the prospect is in 
a much better humor, and his mind is in a more 
decisive state than later, when he has been 
brought into contact with the business worries 
of the day. 


17 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


There is always a temptation for a salesman 
working a metropolitan territory away from the 
home office to keep irregular hours. If he thinks 
the day will be a “bad day” for seeing prospects 
he will come down a half hour or so late, and go 
home a half hour or so early and ease his con¬ 
science by saying to himself: “Well, I couldn't 
have done anything anyhow.” A salesman who 
lets himself drift into this mental state is stand¬ 
ing with one foot on a banana peel. It is a sure 
sign that he is losing his fighting spirit without 
which no salesman can progress in this competi¬ 
tive day and age. Don't lose your grip. If nec¬ 
essary do as one insurance salesman did who 
forced himself to get down to the office at a 
regular hour every morning by keeping the only 
key to the office himself which compelled him to 
be down at eight to let the clerks in. 

Missionary Calls 

Starting early, however, will avail little unless 
you arrange your day's program systematically. 
Without that well-arranged program you are apt 
to find yourself standing on a corner asking your¬ 
self where to go next. 

In connection with working metropolitan 
territory a very successful life insurance sales- 


18 




WORKING A METROPOLITAN TERRITORY 


man offers this suggestion which is worthy of 
your consideration: 

“My observation of insurance salesmen con¬ 
vinces me that most of them fail because they do 
not thoroughly appreciate the advantage of add¬ 
ing new blood to their prospect list. When these 
new men first start out they must of necessity 
make plenty of calls. Then as the early seeds 
take root, grow, and result in requests for them 
to call, these men unconsciously get into the habit 
of making fewer and fewer original calls. They 
imagine they are too busy. What happens? The 
first thing you know the salesman is waiting for 
business to come to him. Instead of picking the 
prospects he wants to sell—the big juicy ones— 
he is satisfied to loaf along and let the prospects 
pick him. 

An Old Timer’s Advice 

“Above all else a salesman must be careful 
not to get into such a frame of mind. He cannot 
afford it. The reason I was able to write $2,000,- 
000 worth of insurance last year was because I 
made it a rule to make three missionary calls on 
new prospects every day, in addition to my call¬ 
backs. These new calls were usually on concerns 
whose signs attracted my attention while in their 
locality or office building. Such calls are in 

12 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


reality by-products of the daily routine calls, and 
take but a few minutes each to make, as all I 
attempt on the first call is to arrange for a future 
interview under favorable conditions. But they 
pay big.” 

A. R. Kneibler, while general sales manager 
of the Baker-Vawter organization, was a staunch 
advocate of setting a quota of so many missionary 
calls each day in addition to call-backs. In a 
bulletin on “Working Territories” he says: 

Sales Follow Calls 

'‘Your future business depends on making a 
definite number of missionary calls every day. 
When you get to the point when your day is taken 
up answering calls, ask for a reduction in terri¬ 
tory. Otherwise you are deliberately allowing 
competition to become firmly intrenched in the 
unworked establishments in your territory. You 
are making it constantly harder for yourself to 
hold established customers. You are increasing 
sales resistance. You are putting a yoke around 
your own neck in that you are unable to select 
prospects through losing your ability to do pros¬ 
pecting, the basis of all successful selling.” 

Too much emphasis cannot be placed on the 
importance of maintaining a high daily average 
of calls. The soundness of this policy has been 


20 




WORKING A METROPOLITAN TERRITORY 


demonstrated over and over again, but seldom 
more forcibly than by the Remington Typewriter 
Company. John M. Bruce, vice-president of the 
company, in a recent address to the Association 
of National Advertisers, said, “We had a sales¬ 
man who had been hanging on by his eyebrows. 
He just sold the minimum amount of goods. I 
figured out a bonus system. I said to him: ‘All 
you have to do is to make calls. If you make 
enough calls and demonstrations, the price of 
those will pay your drawing account in cash, and 
all commissions you make will be velvet. Of 
course your commissions will be a little smaller, 
but you ought not to mind that/ 

“Now when I told that to the ‘wise guys/ 
they didn’t believe me. But the man I am dis¬ 
cussing wasn’t so smart. He believed it. He 
believed he could make money that way. He 
went to the tallest office building in his town and 
started at the top. He walked into the first door 
he came to and said: 

“ ‘Mister, want to buy a Remington Type¬ 
writer?’ 

“The man said ‘No.’ 

“The salesman marched into the next office 
and asked: 

“ ‘Want to buy a Remington Typewriter?’ 

“The reply was ‘No.’ 

“The salesman made eighty calls a day that 


21 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


way and we paid for them. The first month he 
made nine sales. That was more than he had 
ever made before in one month. The next month 
people that fellow had called upon began to call 
up by phone. 

“Remember, he was a rotten salesman. He 
is yet, but people started taking machines away 
from him. There were people who said: 'Yes, I 
want a typewriter. I haven't seen a salesman 
around here in ages. Come in. For goodness' 
sake let me buy a typewriter.' And he sold those 
people. 

“The second month he had twenty-eight 
sales. He has been averaging thirty a month. 
That is a pretty good average and he has done 
that simply because he exposed himself to the 
sales." 

Show the Goods to Get Orders 

Marshall Field used to have a rule that when 
a customer asked the price of anything, instead 
of answering, to put the goods on the counter 
and give her an opportunity to examine them be¬ 
fore answering the question. This is good sales¬ 
manship, and applies to selling almost everything 
that can be demonstrated. The trouble with most 
salesmen is that they don't give the goods a 
chance to do any talking, they want to do it all 


22 




WORKING A METROPOLITAN TERRITORY 


themselves. In this connection it is interesting 
to note that an analysis of three months’ sales 
made by the Dalton Adding Machine Company 
showed the following percentage of sales to dem¬ 
onstrations : 

April 

Demo’s Sales 

47 Quota Makers. 901 100% 

47 Other Salesmen... 84 16% 

May 

Demo’s Sales 

47 Quota Makers. 977 116% 

47 Other Salesmen... 94 24% 

June 

Demo’s Sales 

47 Quota Makers. 1058 121% 

47 Other Salesmen... 108 27% 

A great deal of business is lost because sales¬ 
men do not follow up calls intensively. Follow¬ 
up calls should always be arranged too soon 
rather than too late. The buyer’s “No” to a good 
practical suggestion means “call again in two 
weeks.” If you do not, your competitor may 
happen along and get the order which your sug¬ 
gestion created. The truth of this rule is easily 
proved by your own experience. How many 
times have you called on a man and felt positive 
you had “got under his skin” but that pride or 
stubbornness on his part prevented his capitula- 







FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


tion then? But the idea you put into his mind 
grew after your departure. More and more he 
realized the truth of your contention and began 
to feel the need of the thing you had for sale. 
If you had been a mind reader, and could have 
known what was taking place in his mind, 
you would have secured the order without any 
trouble. But you were not a mind reader. You 
had given the prospect up as “hopeless”— a hard- 
shelled proposition. Your competitor, however, 
stumbled along quite by accident at the psycho¬ 
logical moment and reaped the harvest that 
rightfully belonged to you. The only way to 
guard against such loss is to time your call-backs 
so that there is no chance for your competitor to 
slip in between. 


24 




Ill—Working a Provincial 
Territory 

In places where salesmen congregate it is 
quite common to hear them boast about the num¬ 
ber of towns they made last week and the number 
of calls they got in between trains in this, that, 
or the other town. When you hear a man brag¬ 
ging in this way you can generally set it down 
that he is a poor salesman. The measure of sales 
ability is not how many towns you can make in 
a week, but how many orders you can get at the 
least expense . 

You cannot possibly get the maximum busi¬ 
ness out of a town if you rush through it like a 
baby cyclone. Neither can you get a high yield 
of business out of a territory if you do not have 
a systematic way of working so that after you 
have covered your territory you are reasonably 
sure that you have all the business that is worth 
while. You must study a country territory until 
you know every hamlet and cross road where 
business is to be secured, and you must study 
every town until you know local conditions even 
better than the men you must sell . 

The remarkable record of a salesman for 
the Ingersoll watch people offers a striking ex¬ 
ample of what practical territory study means in 
25 


FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


the way of signed orders. The first two or three 
trips he made through the small towns of Indiana 
were dismal failures. His reports showed a high 
percentage of calls—he was using a car—but 
almost a goose egg when it came to sales. So the 
sales manager trailed him with another car on 
the next trip. In nearly every case he was able 
to show a sale, where the salesman reported “Not 
interested.” When the salesman returned to the 
office the sales manager confronted him with his 
orders and the salesman’s reports. It opened the 
salesman’s eyes to his shortcomings as nothing 
else had ever done, and he was forced to admit 
that he simply was “not there” as a salesman. 

Where to Get Data on Local Conditions 

“Now,” said his sales manager, “you could 
have brought in these orders just as well as not 
if you had gone slower and made a study of local 
conditions as you went along. The reason you 
did not get them was because you did not localize 
your sales talk. On your next trip I want you to 
go to the post-office, the library, the bank, or the 
newspaper in every important town before you 
make any attempt to sell a bill of goods. Find 
out about local conditions—the industries of the 
town, and the classes of trade upon which the 
town lives. Pick up all the information you can 
26 




WORKING A PROVINCIAL TERRITORY 


as to the characteristics of the different dealers 
in town, the peculiar cross currents of trade, 
whether the industries are busy, the condition of 
crops, how business is, etc. Then go to your 
buyer and hitch up your sales talk with local 
conditions and you will surely get his undivided 
attention, and most likely an order.” 

The salesman did as he was told. The first 
dealer he called upon was skeptical. Yes he knew 
about Ingersoll watches. The advertising proofs 
he admitted were good. But the people in his 
town did not read the magazines in which this 
advertising would appear, and the people right 
now are not spending much until after they get 
their liberty bonds paid for. Ordinarily the 
salesman would have answered this last objec¬ 
tion by some generality about the prosperous 
condition of the country as a whole. 

Pinning Down the Buyer With Facts 

But he had just come from the bank, and he 
knew more about business conditions and pros¬ 
perity in that dealers home town than the mer¬ 
chant did himself. He took his memorandum 
showing increase in saving's bank deposits which 
the banker had given him, and laying it along¬ 
side the tabulation of pay-roll increases given 
him by the local editor he opened that merchant's 
eyes to the great opportunity that was lying 
27 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


right under his feet, an opportunity which up to 
this time he had never even suspected. Did the 
merchant buy those watches? How could he do 
otherwise? 

This condition is not peculiar, by any means, 
to salesmen selling watches. It applies to any 
salesman selling in provincial territory. You 
will never get very far until you realize that 
every buyer thinks his town, his business, his cus¬ 
tomers are different from any other town, any 
other business and any other customers. You 
have to meet him on his own ground. Therefore 
make it your business to know more about the 
differences than he does. 

Using the Telephone 

When a salesman is working a territory 
without the aid of a car the utilization of spare 
time becomes a problem. No red-blooded sales¬ 
man likes to loaf away an hour or so a day 
waiting for a train. In this connection it is in¬ 
teresting to learn that a salesman for the Atlanta 
Milling Company won a sales contest by the sim¬ 
ple expedient of using the telephone while other 
salesmen were exchanging stories in the hotel 
lobby. In the last week of the contest he sold 
$7,000 worth of flour as a result of 126 telephone 
calls, the total expense of which was $13.50. 

28 




WORKING A PROVINCIAL, TERRITORY 


While the telephone should never be substi¬ 
tuted for personal calls when personal calls are 
possible, it nevertheless offers a way of reaching 
some of the more out-of-the-way accounts which 
otherwise might be passed up. Some of the 
biggest deals have been made by telephone, indi¬ 
cating the possibilities of this kind of salesman¬ 
ship. Negotiations for the purchase of the site 
of the present Equitable Building in New York 
City, a deal involving over $30,000,000, were con¬ 
ducted entirely by telephone between New York 
City and Wilmington, Delaware. The principals 
did not even see each other until the papers were 
ready to sign. The H. A. Marr Grocery Com¬ 
pany of Denver increased city sales two and 
one-half times in a little over a year by taking 
salesmen off the street five days a week and re¬ 
quiring them to do all their actual selling over 
the telephone. The sixth day was spent in visit¬ 
ing the trade and forming new acquaintanceships. 
But like everything else, telephone selling can be 
overdone, and judgment should be exercised as 
to when and how to use it. Non-productive toll 
calls play havoc with the expense account. 

Use of Advance Notices and Call Cards 

When the time that you can stay in a town 
is limited to a few calls between trains it is well 


29 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


to use some sort of an advance letter with a card 
enclosed requesting you to call. There are any 
number of different ways of framing such a let¬ 
ter, but the following form used with marked 
success by W. H. Young, sales manager for the 
Rotospeed Company, is a good example: 

Dear Mr. Blank: 

/ am coming to Elgin next week and expect to 
drop in to see you, but Vd much rather be invited. 

I have collected some very keen ideas from con¬ 
cerns who have similar problems to yours, and I want 
to show you copies of them. 

/ have some suggestions to make in connection 
with the printing of your office and factory forms, 
bulletins to employees, letters to the sales force, price 
lists, index cards, etc., any of which can be printed on 
a Rotospeed at twenty cents a thousand. 

That price is mighty cheap, isn’t it? And you will 
wonder whether the work is practical. This letter is a 
sample of it, and just to prove that it is practical for 
your business, I want to bring a machine to your 
office and print some job that you want to get out 
right away. 

Will you mail the enclosed card? No obligation. 

Such circularizing is, however, very expen¬ 
sive on account of the number of letters that 
must be mailed out to get one or two requests to 
call. They are not therefore recommended ex¬ 
cept in cases where the time is very limited, or 
where the proposition requires some sort of an 
advance introduction for the salesman. 


30 





IV—Knowing a Territory Too 
Well 

As a general rule the salesman who is thor¬ 
oughly familiar with his territory enjoys a 
distinct advantage over a salesman who is unfa¬ 
miliar with it, but, as often happens, there is a 
point of diminishing returns in knowing a terri¬ 
tory as in everything else. This point is reached 
when you find yourself sitting down and deciding 
that such and such a man is not a good prospect 
without first having tried to sell him. The great¬ 
est handicap that a veteran salesman has is his 
inclination to “size up” prospects. 

E. M. Swasey, while advertising manager for 
the Street Railway Advertising Company of New 
York, had a chauffeur who was both fearless and 
determined in driving, and he thought the man 
would make a good salesman. When December 
came, and it was decided to lay up the car for the 
winter, he offered the chauffeur a “hold over” 
job as a salesman. In view of the circumstances, 
the new salesman was not given a regular terri¬ 
tory, but was sent out to work on some “heart 
breakers” which other salesmen had turned in as 
“hopeless.” “He can’t do any harm to these,” 
the Boss figured, “and if he sells some, I will be 
ahead that much.” 


31 


FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


The first few calls the new salesman made 
were not exactly what would be called encourag¬ 
ing and, tired of being turned down, he decided to 
try a few cold canvass calls, and picked one of 
the big department stores as a place to start. 
Not having the name of anybody to see, he de¬ 
cided to call on the general manager, blissfully 
ignorant of the fact that this particular general 
manager was reputed among New York sales¬ 
men to be an “impossibility,” and equally igno¬ 
rant of the fact that because of a “jam” of some 
years standing this particular store had long 
since been consigned to the dead prospect file. 

Buyers Resent Inattention 

He sent in his card. The young lady came 
back and invited him in. It was all quite accord¬ 
ing to his expectations. The general manager 
was glad to see him. • He reciprocated by telling 
the general manager why he ought to use his 
medium. “You don't have to sell me,” replied 
the prospect, “we're sold already. The only rea¬ 
son we haven't been with you long ago is that 
you people seem to think it is up to us to chase 
after you with a contract. I'm glad to see you 
are waking up down there.” 

Of course, there were other preliminaries, 
but the outcome of it was that the salesman 


32 




KNOWING A TERRITORY TOO WELL 


landed an order for $25,000 worth of advertising. 
And with that order to cheer him on he went out 
and repeated, with the result that for two con¬ 
secutive months he led the whole organization. 

This is by no means an isolated case. In 
every sales organization, perhaps right in your 
own territory, you will find salesmen who know 
their territory so well they are able to decide 
before they even talk to a prospect just why he 
does not need the thing they have for sale. When 
a salesman falls into the habit of thinking why 
people don’t want what he is selling, you can bet 
your last dollar he is slipping. You can gamble 
that some young chap, who doesn’t know about 
these things that can’t be done, will take over the 
territory and open up business which had lain 
for months right under the nose of the other 
fellow. 


Newcomer “Shows-up” Old Timer 

A very striking example of this was revealed 
recently in the Packard organization. One of 
the salesmen in an eastern territory had reached 
the point where he didn’t need to make many 
calls. “He knew his territory so well that it was 
not necessary,” he said. When the home office 
sent him a bunch of prospect cards he would 
send most of them back with some such notation 


33 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


as “I know this party intimately and he is not 
interested.” Naturally this manner of treating 
inquiries which represented a cost of from $15 
to $30 each to secure did not make a hit back in 
Detroit, and it wasn't long before he was given 
an extended vacation for the good of the organi¬ 
zation, and a new salesman was sent on. 

This young salesman wasn't handicapped 
by knowing anybody. He was out to make a 
showing, and he waded right into his predeces¬ 
sor's friends. He even went so far as to make 
twelve sales right in the very building in which 
the company had offices. His predecessor never 
“wasted” time calling on these people—he knew 
they weren't in the market. 

Are You Losing Your Grip? 

Now no salesman, regardless of what he is 
selling, can afford to let himself think he knows 
his territory so well that he knows that no busi¬ 
ness is getting away from him. As sure as you 
begin to feel that way it is a sign you are losing 
your grip—it is an indication that you have lost 
the snap that marked your first work in the ter¬ 
ritory. Be careful you don't get any mistaken 
ideas about knowing your territory too well. 

Quite often you will meet specialty salesmen 
—those selling such products as adding ma- 


34 




KNOWING A TERRITORY TOO WELL 


chines, typewriters, addressing machines, etc.— 
who will tell you that their territory is all sold 
up, and who just “know” they can't sell over a 
hundred or a dozen more equipments in it. You 
will meet jobbers' salesmen who will confidently 
tell you they are getting every dollar's worth of 
business there is to be had out of the territory— 
they know they are. These men know the terri¬ 
tory too well. The first thing they know they 
will find some one else on the job. 

The policy of the Packard Company and 
others who believe in switching salesmen from 
one territory to another just as soon as they get 
to thinking they know it clearly indicates that it 
is a good plan every so often to ask ourselves a 
few frank questions. Is there any business we 
are not getting which a new man on the territory, 
hustling to make a showing, free of all friend¬ 
ship handicaps, would get? Are there any new 
accounts slipping through our fingers simply 
because we think they are not worth going after? 

Another point in connection with working ter¬ 
ritories which is not always appreciated by 
younger salesmen is the potential value of es¬ 
tablished good-will. It is quite common to see 
insurance salesmen, for example, rushing about a 
territory, hit or miss fashion, chasing “hunches” 
when, if they would but make a canvass of the 
35 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


company’s policyholders in that territory they 
could get the names of many prospects who the 
old customers actually know to be in the market 
for insurance. How many typewriter salesmen 
do you know who sell a man a typewriter and 
then forget all about him? Those salesmen are 
making a grave mistake. They are not cashing- 
in on their established points of contact; they 
are on a par with a man building a house who 
gets the foundation laid, and then instead of 
going ahead with the first floor, goes off on an¬ 
other lot and starts a new foundation. It has 
been conclusively proven by one of the largest 
correspondence schools that a salesman who 
works established points of contact will sell three 
times as much as one who disregards everything 
that has been done before by following the itiner¬ 
ant plan. 


36 




PART TWO 

Managing the Interview 
±—When the Buyer Isn’t Interested. 

II—How to Stage Your Sales Talk. 

III— Swinging the Whole Proposition. 

IV— Making the Buyer Believe in You. 

V—Knowing When to Close. 


Let me do my work from day to day . 

In field or forest, at desk or loom, 

In roaring market-place or tranquil room; 
Let me but find it in my heart to say, 

When vagrant wishes beckon me astray, 
“This is my work; my blessing,not my doom; 
“Of all who live, I am the one by whom 
“This work can best be done in the right 
way” 

Then shall I see it not too great, nor small. 
To suit my spirit and to prove my powers; 
Then shall / cheerful greet the laboring 
hours. 

And cheerful turn, when the long shadows 
fall 

At eventide, to play and love and rest. 
Because I know for me my work is best” 

—Henry Van Dyke . 






I—When the Buyer Isn’t 
Interested 

If it were not for uninterested buyers there 
would be no need for salesmen. You owe your 
job to them. Therefore, instead of bemoaning 
the fact that a prospect is not interested, try to 
get the viewpoint that if he were interested there 
would be no need for your calling; a catalogue 
or a circular would be all that was necessary. 

How many people are “interested” in buying 
life insurance. Yet in spite of the fact that the 
man who is interested in taking out insurance is 
an exception, the earnings of life insurance 
agents are surprisingly large, as the following 
tabulation of gross commissions paid insurance 
salesmen during 1918 will indicate: 


Name Company Location Income 

F. S. Doremus Guardian New York City $91,054 

R. A. Wallis Fidelity Mutual New York City 87,059 

Henry H. Kohn Phoenix Mutual Albany, N. Y. 76,900 

E. S. Rowland Prudential St. Louis, Mo. 65,742 

J. E. Smith Prudential Chicago, Ill. 59,775 

Darby A. Day Mutual Life Chicago, Ill. 59,384 

J. S. Myrick Mutual Life New York City 49,609 

W. Van Sickle Home Life Detroit, Mich. 49,104 

C. E. Ives Mutual Life New York City 46,898 


F. A. Dickey Security Mutual Minneapolis, Minn. 43,196 

Can you imagine any of the salesmen shown 
on this list turning in a report marked “Not in¬ 
terested”? Can you imagine what an agency 
superintendent would say to a salesman who told 


39 


FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


him he couldn’t sell such and such a party be¬ 
cause the party was “not interested”? 

It is generally conceded by successful sales¬ 
men that the best tactics to follow when a man 
tells you he is not interested is to tell him frankly 
that you know he is not interested; in fact, the 
reason for your call is to interest him in your 
proposition. If he knew about it, or was already 
interested, he would have written the house on 
his own initiative. Quite often a determined an¬ 
swer to the objection will open the way for an 
interview. 

Of Course, He Didn't Want It 

E. D. Gibbs, advertising director of the B. F. 
Goodrich Company, tells of a salesman for the 
National Cash Register Company in England, 
who put across many a sale to a buyer who 
“didn’t want any cash register.” 

“On one occasion,” Mr. Gibbs relates, “we 
went into a public house to sell a cash register. 
The salesman, whom we will call Mac, had a cash 
register with him. He brought it in, put it up 
on a table and said to the proprietor: T have 
come to show you a cash register.’ 

“ T don’t want it,’ was the prompt response. 

“ T know you don’t. If you did you would 
have sent for it long ago.’ 

40 





WHEN THE BUYER ISN’T INTERESTED 


“To which the man replied: T don't want it, 
I tell you. They are no good.' 

“ ‘How do you know they are no good? Did 
you ever use one? Do you know anybody who 
ever used one?' To which the prospect was 
forced to answer in the negative. 

“ ‘Then/ said Mac, ‘how in hell do you know 
they are no good ?’ 

“Mac had the man where he wanted him. 
He had to listen and he did. Before Mac had 
finished he sold that register. Now what made 
Mac successful? Simply this: He believed in 
his goods, believed in them so thoroughly that he 
would not listen to argument. He could not 
spell ‘psychology' on a bet, but he did possess, 
to an extraordinary degree, that remarkable 
ability to make the other fellow see a thing as he 
saw it.” 

On another occasion this same salesman was 
sent to sell a certain man who controlled one of 
the large multiple stores which they have over 
there. He was a very hard man to see; in fact 
he had the reputation of being one of the hardest 
men in London to approach. He saw “travellers” 
(as salesmen are called in England) only two 
days a week and then only a very few. The day 
Mac called was not one of his “receiving days.” 
But that didn't faze Mac, who believed that any 

41 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


man could be seen and sold if a salesman set his 
mind to the task. 

“Instead of going to the little wicket, where 
the boy gets the history of your life,” relates 
Mac, “I drove up to his place of business in a 
very fine car—with a uniformed chauffeur ‘and 
everything/ I was met at the main entrance by 
a commissioner, as they call him, an official be¬ 
decked with medals for long service—for keep¬ 
ing us out. 

Appeal to Prospect's Sense of Justice 

I had him open the door for me. I was 
dressed in a stiff hat and frock coat, the custom¬ 
ary dress in England. I had the advantage in 
that he didn't know me. Taking out my watch 

I told him to tell Mr. - that I was there. 

The commissioner immediately went (which was 
most unusual) to the managing director, and, 
returning, asked for my card. 

“I informed him that I did not have a card, 
and instructed him to deliver that message. He 
came back with a tablet and asked me to state my 
business on it. I wrote to the managing director 
that my business was with him, and of a private 
nature. The commissioner returned a second 
time and said that I would have to write for an 
appointment. I asked the dignitary for another 


42 






WHEN THE BUYER ISN’T INTERESTED 


sheet of paper and wrote: ‘The laws of Great 
Britain have never yet condemned a man without 
a hearing. The courtesy of one gentleman ac¬ 
cords at least an interview to another. I await 
your answer.’ 

“After some prodding the commissioner got 
up enough courage to deliver the message to his 
chief. In a little while he came back and asked 
me to ‘kindly step this way.’ When I faced my 
prospect I handed him my card. 

“ ‘I thought you did not have a card/ said 
the director. 

A Ticklish Situation to Be In 

“I wanted to draw his fire and let him get 
all of the umbrage, which I knew he would feel, 
out of his system before we started in to talk 
business. 

“I said to him, ‘I did not have a card for 
your commissioner, or your servants, inasmuch 
as my business is of a private nature, and during 
negotiations I always consider it as such.’ 

“It was but a short step to convince the direct¬ 
or that he needed cash registers, and after some 
negotiations a sale was made.” 

This incident aptly illustrates that nothing 
is impossible to a resourceful salesman. In the 
last analysis the matter of getting in to see a 


43 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


man or, after getting in, of securing an inter¬ 
view under favorable conditions, largely hinges 
on the determination and skill of the salesman. 
When a prospect tells you he isn't interested, or 
won't see you, either one of two things is the 
matter. Either you have not investigated care¬ 
fully to be sure that the man is a prospect before 
you approached him or, if he is a prospect, you 
are a poor salesman. If the objection is offered 
as a cloak to the real reason for not buying, your 
job is to discover that real reason. If it is ad¬ 
vanced before you have had your opportunity to 
present your proposition fully your approach is 
at fault. It is safe to say that nine out of ten 
men who say they are not interested really mean: 
“From what you say I don't think I am inter¬ 
ested." If you will go out of your way and do a 
little preliminary investigating before calling 
on a man, and find out what does interest him, 
and then plan your attack accordingly, you will 
find “not interested today" buyers “few and far 
between." 

jK v - Ji»< ■ - -.'I 


44 




II—How to Stage Your Sales 
Talk 

One of the few books on salesmanship worth 
reading was written by William Maxwell, vice- 
president of Thomas A. Edison, Inc. In this 
book Mr. Maxwell tells about a talk he once had 
with a notorious character of the underworld. 
The “con” man was letting Mr. Maxwell into a 
few secrets of the “trade”: 

“It is all a mistake to salve a man when you 
are trying to get him hooked,” said the crook. 
“You want to act like you don't think he's got 
the brains or the coin to go through on your 
proposition. Put it up to him so he'll have to 
hook himself in order to show you that your 
opinion of him ain't high enough.” 

Now I am not for a moment suggesting that 
you use a “con” man's methods to sell your prop¬ 
osition. Nevertheless human nature is pretty 
much the same the world over, and in selling it is 
always well to stage your sales talk with an eye 
to the effect rather than the sound . You don't 
have to be a smooth talker to be a good salesman. 

The first step in staging the interview is to 
make the buyer think “how can I use this thing” 
rather than “why I can't use this thing.” Mr. 
Maxwell, himself a successful salesman, recom- 
45 


FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


mends opening the sales talk with an inoffensive 
question. A question does not challenge a buyer 
in the way a statement of fact is likely to do, and 
it makes the buyer talk, which is greatly to be 
desired, at the opening stage of a solicitation. 
“If I were selling saws,” says Mr. Maxwell, “I 
would say to a man: 'Have you an organization 
that can sell a high grade saw?’ There are three 
ways a man would be likely to answer this ques¬ 
tion, any one of which would be an invitation to 
you to talk. These three ways are as follows: 

“Buyer: We’re doing it now. 

“Salesman: I guess I don’t make clear to 
you the kind of a saw I mean. 

“Buyer: Well, what kind do you mean? 
or 

“Buyer: We are handling the best saw on 
the market now. 

“Salesman: I’m talking about a different 
kind of a saw. 

“Buyer: What kind are you talking about? 
or 

“Buyer: What we’ve got satisfies us. 

“Salesman: But could your organization 
sell a high grade saw? (which brings the buyer 
back to where he was in the first place).” 

Plan your interview so that when you get 
your opportunity to present your proposition 

46 




HOW TO STAGE YOUR SALES TALK 


your customer will get a mental picture of what 
you are selling, not a mere mess of words. Mar¬ 
shal your facts in logical order, building one 
thought on top of the other, as a brick mason lays 
bricks. And bring all the customer's idea-receiv¬ 
ing faculties into play. You can tell a man you 
are selling a silk of very fine texture but he will 
be much more impressed if he can see it and feel 
it as well. When he sees a thing, and feels it, as 
well as hears about it, he has received the idea 
through three distinct senses—sight, feeling, and 
hearing. Of these routes to the brain the sense 
of sight is by far the most effective, therefore, 
whenever possible, it should be utilized the most. 

Arthur Brisbane 9 s Plan 

When Arthur Brisbane first went to work 
for Hearst, he was given the task of “putting 
over" the New York Journal . 

Brisbane's editorial talent soon showed re¬ 
sults. From almost nothing the circulation 
climbed until other papers were left behind. 
But still the merchants refused to send in their 
business. Finally Brisbane decided to try his 
hand as an advertising salesman. One by one 
he called on the various merchants and told them 
about the JournaVs new circulation. They lis¬ 
tened attentively, but continued to “wait and 
see." 


47 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


The editor-salesman came back to the office 
and thought things over. Long experience in 
dealing with the human mind told him that the 
failure of his sales talk was lack of pictures. His 
prospects had listened to his facts, but they could 
not understand. It was up to him to picture to 
them what 500,000 circulation really meant. And 
he decided on a plan that soon set all New York 
to wondering. 

Picture the Difficult Facts 

The next day, and every day following, the 
Journal carried a standing request for all read¬ 
ers to write Mr. Brisbane and tell him just why 
they had stopped taking their old paper, and had 
taken the Journal instead. The response was 
immediate and voluminous. Soon the entire 
three walls of the office were stacked ceiling-high 
with letters from subscribers, telling why they 
had changed over to the Journal . Most of the 
letters were never opened, but they served to 
impress on the merchants who saw them what 
500,000 circulation really meant. 

From the day that Brisbane started inviting 
the merchants to his office, the advertising col¬ 
umns of the Journal began to fill. Brisbane’s 
stratagem had turned defeat into victory. It had 
made the merchants" visualize what they had 
48 




HOW TO STAGE YOUR SALES TALK 


heretofore only understood. That is the secret 
of influencing men's minds. It is just as true in 
the work you are doing as it is in selling news¬ 
paper circulation. 

Speak Slowly and Distinctly 

Salesmen should cultivate the habit of speak¬ 
ing distinctly, deliberately and slowly—espe¬ 
cially slowly. Make sure that the customer 
thoroughly understands what you have just said 
before you proceed to your next point. Do not 
be content with asking a man if he understands 
what you said. He will invariably say he does, 
when as a matter of fact he has not the vaguest 
idea of what you mean. A sales manager at a 
convention once explained a new sales policy to 
ten salesmen. He asked each man one by one if 
what he said was clear to him, and in each in¬ 
stance the man said “yes." Then he had paper 
passed out to the men and requested each one to 
write out his understanding of the policy and 
sign his name to it, so that there would be no 
room for argument later on. When the papers 
were examined it was found that only three out 
of the ten men understood, although they all 
said they did. We are all alike, salesmen and 
buyers; we have an inward fear that people 
will think we are thick-headed. It is this fear 


49 





FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


that makes a buyer say he understands even 
though he does not. Many a good talking point 
is lost, and many a big sale muffed, simply be¬ 
cause the buyer did not understand. 

“Speak clearly,” advises a noted authority 
on the voice, “forming the sounds on the lips 
and enunciating carefully. It is not loudness 
of tone that causes the voice to travel. It is 
the firmness of tone, distinctiveness of utterance 
and clearness of expression that gives the voice 
its carrying power. Learn to put color in your 
voice, for that is the secret of persuasive talk¬ 
ing. Color should be placed in the voice only 
on the vowel sounds. It is impossible to color 
consonants. Remember, too, it is only by putting 
mentality into the voice that you make it ring 
true and influence the minds of others.” 


50 




Ill—Swinging the Whole 
Proposition 

A salesman is valued by his house according 
to the business he creates rather than by the 
business he secures . A wholesale hardware sales¬ 
man, for example, might go out and sell two 
or three car loads of nails and pile up big volume, 
but it would not be profitable business. On the 
other hand, another salesman for the same house 
might sell a much smaller volume, but the items 
would show a higher profit . From the stand¬ 
point of worth, the latter salesman would be 
a much more valuable man. It is very important 
that a salesman should realize he is a business 
within a business. The dividends he pays de¬ 
pend on his ability to make a profit on every 
sale. 

Before any business can hope for success 
its management must get a big conception of 
its opportunity. It must see and do things in 
a big way. The same is true with salesmen. 
“The only difference between a gate slammer 
and a salesman is the size of his thoughts.” 
If you want to achieve big things in sales work 
you must think big . 

“While I enjoy the privilege of knowing in¬ 
timately Hugh Chalmers, Norval A. Hawkins, 

51 


FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


C. Louis Allen, and some other of this coun¬ 
try's master salesmen," said Douglas Barnes, 
one of the country's leading salesmen, “the 
greatest salesman I ever knew was a man pub¬ 
licly unknown. He always sold at least three 
times as much as the next biggest star in his 
line. He was scarcely five feet four and in 
other ways lacked many natural advantages, yet 
he was a treble success for one very good rea¬ 
son, and that is, that he thought consistently big. 
He could think and visualize big orders, and he 
got big orders in consequence. 

Think Big—Do Big 

“This man dared to presume that his cus¬ 
tomers were big users. In eight times out of 
ten he satisfied them that they were, and they 
bought accordingly from him, as they would 
from no other man. On the other two occasions 
he probably did not sell a nickel's worth of mer¬ 
chandise, but the average was most overwhelm¬ 
ingly in his favor. Had he thought small and 
peddled, he might have taken ten small orders. 
As it was he thought big, talked big and wrote 
eight regular orders—the aggregate of which 
was a dozen times as big as ten ordinary orders 
might have been. 

“ ‘As a man thinketh' is the greatest truth 
62 





SWINGING THE WHOLE PROPOSITION 


ever uttered. Oftentimes it is the only differ¬ 
ence between the average and the regular sales¬ 
man. Fully a dozen of our regular salesmen now 
do five or six times as much business regularly 
every week, all of which is indisputable evidence 
of what a change in mental attitude can do for 
a man—what it will do for you.” 

If you want to know how you can begin to 
put this thought into practical application, be¬ 
gin by applying it to the very first step of your 
work tomorrow morning. In other words, in¬ 
stead of even thinking before you make the first 
sale tomorrow that you might be turned down, 
just imagine on your way in that you see the 
order already written on your book. You will 
be astounded to note how this positive thought 
will multiply your daily business. 

The same principle holds true in selling 
the whole line instead of getting an order for 
a few items. Think in terms of the full line and 
you will sell the full line. Think in terms of 
one item and you will sell one item. In this 
connection salesmen should practice what is 
called “institutional salesmanship.” The idea of 
institutional salesmanship is to sell the house be¬ 
hind the product, as well as the product. In¬ 
stead of urging a buyer to give you business 
on the strength of isolated points connected 
53 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


with certain items in the line, make him feel 
that your house is a good house to do business 
with, that its prices are right, and sell him on 
the advantages of confining his business to one 
line. One very successful salesman for Pratt’s 
poultry foods uses specimen orders to good ad¬ 
vantage in this connection. During his talk with 
the customer he shows these sample orders, in¬ 
dicating the faith that other dealers in the terri¬ 
tory have in his line and how they order the full 
line. If your line is an advertised one, sold 
through dealers, it should be pointed out to the 
customer that your advertising creates a demand 
for the full line, just as much as for one or 
two products, and that unless he has the full 
line on his shelves he is overlooking easy money. 

Sell the House With the Goods 

Selling on an institutional basis means con¬ 
vincing a man that he ought to do business with 
you because of the reputation of the concern 
you represent. For example, a Sherwin-Williams 
salesman used to solicit business from a rail¬ 
road on the grounds that his paint is best for 
that purpose. For all the purchasing agent 
knows it might be. If he wants to find out for 
himself by making a test, he can. But that will 
take months. 


54 





SWINGING THE WHOLE PROPOSITION 


Under the institutional plan, the salesman 
says to the buyer: “Of course if you wish I 
would be glad to go into details of analysis to 
show you that our paint is superior to any other 
in durability. But I prefer not to talk about 
my competitors' products, so I will simply say 
that the fact that 192 out of 207 railroads in 
the country use our paint proves its suitability 
to your work. Here is a record of our sales to 
railroads for the past ten years—if our paint 
wasn't all that I say it is, such sales gains would 
not be possible.” 

In the same way, a salesman for a jobbing 
house might be able to sell goods by talking the 
wide margin of profit on certain items. He 
would hold his trade so long as no one came 
along with a more profitable line. But if he 
had convinced the dealer that he ought to put 
in the line because of its completeness, and be¬ 
cause of the fact that he represented a house 
that would stand behind the line, it would be 
hard for any fly-by-night concern to get that 
business away. The profit would be a secondary 
consideration then. 


55 




VI—Making the Buyer Believe 
in You 

A sale might be compared to a three-legged 
stool, one leg of which is desire, another con¬ 
fidence and the third action. Take away any one 
of these legs and the sale will topple over. No 
matter how much a man may desire the thing 
you offer him, he will not act until he has satis¬ 
fied himself that you are worthy of his con¬ 
fidence, and that your house is worthy of his 
business. That is obvious. 

There are several ways of winning con¬ 
fidence. One plan is to associate ideas in the 
buyer's mind—“connect the unknown with the 
known," as Arthur Dunn puts it. It is easier 
to sell Armour's Oats than it would be John 
Jones' Oats, because people know that the Ar¬ 
mour name stands for quality and, while they 
may not know anything about Armour Oats, 
they do know a great deal about other Armour 
products. 

Another commonly used plan of creating 
confidence is to use testimonial letters and docu¬ 
mentary evidence. In this connection, however, 
it should be pointed out that such evidence should 
be used only to prove a point. If used to instill 
desire it is likely to slow up action and defeat 
56 


MAKING THE BUYER BELIEVE IN YOU 


its purpose. The guarantee is still another plan. 
But the most important methods of creating con¬ 
fidence are those the least thought about . 

The confidence a man has in you as a sales¬ 
man is influenced more by your actions, mental 
attitude and mannerisms than by any other one 
factor. All the time you are talking to a man 
he is secretly “sizing you up.” Like the great 
statesman who found the answers to his ques¬ 
tions in a man's eyes rather than in his words, 
your prospect is carefully weighing the little 
things you do or say. And when he judges you 
finally, it will be by intuition rather than by 
reason. 


Quality Buyers Admire 

We all instinctively admire loyalty in a 
man. Therefore, it is good business for you, as a 
salesman, to radiate loyalty in your dealing with 
customers. Do not stoop to the temptation of 
trying to curry favor with a customer by siding 
against your house. Stand right up for the man 
who pays your salary and for your own feelings. 
Why should you let a customer run you down 
as a man, or run down your house for something 
for which you are not responsible? Get all the 
facts of the case and see where the trouble really 
lies. Permit no customer to ride over you rough 
57 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


shod. It is uncalled for in any event. If the 
customer does not order in time so that a ship¬ 
ment can get through to him before his stock 
is exhausted, why blame the house or the sales¬ 
man? Isn't it his own fault? Show him it is. 
Don't be afraid to stand up for the house you 
represent when you know it is on the square and 
doing exactly what it promises. Show the cus¬ 
tomer gently but firmly where the trouble is. 
Let him know you don't propose to be hauled 
over the coals for his own shortsightedness. 

Danger of Over-Stating Your Case 

When you make a statement refrain from 
using words that will give the impression you 
are trying to over-state the point. The National 
Cash Register Company impresses upon its men 
that it is dangerous to use superlatives in selling. 
It even goes so far as to hold that it is often 
better to under-estimate a quality rather than to 
over-estimate it. 

The reason for this is quite plain if one 
stops to reason it out. When you describe a 
thing with such words as “best,” “unsurpassed,” 
“best in the world,” “nothing can equal it,” 
“without a peer,” you unconsciously impress a 
buyer with your desire to exaggerate. Even if 
your product is the best in the world, he won't 
58 




MAKING THE BUYER BELIEVE IN YOU 


believe it just because you say so. He discounts 
your statement, and, of course, discounts your 
entire selling talk likewise. He puts you down 
as being over-enthusiastic. Your statements 
don't ring true. 

On the other hand, it is human nature to 
credit a man with more than he claims, if he 
states his claims with a depreciating smile and 
in a soft tone. It rings truer when you tell a 
man that with one exception your goods are the 
best on the market, than it does to use the tongue- 
worn expression, “best in the world." Your 
prospect will regard the one as a reserved and 
frank statement of fact, and the other merely 
as an expression. 

Taken individually, cases where superlative 
phrases are extravagantly used are not of seri¬ 
ous consequence. They would not make or break 
a sale. But where they get in their deadly work 
is in giving “tone" to character. And that is 
quite a serious matter, because it directly affects 
a buyer's confidence in you and, as we all know, 
confidence must be the first step in a sale. 

Watch your little words. Don’t over-indulge 
in superlatives. Above all avoid meaningless 
generalities. 


59 




V—Knowing When to Close 

Every sales force is divided into two groups 
—“almosters” and “finishers.” 

An “almoster” is a salesman who carries a 
sale right up to the closing point and stops 
there. He delights in talking about the business 
he expects to get next week, next month or next 
year. He wants double credit—when he almost 
has an order, and again when he finally turns 
it in. 

A “finisher” is a “go-getter.” When he goes 
out after an order he usually comes back with 
it, not with a long story about how he almost 
got it. He knows quite well that the house is 
not interested in business he expects to get some 
day. Expectations are not negotiable. 

So far as outward appearances go you can't 
tell an “almoster” from a “finisher.” They look 
the same, they talk the same, and they may act 
the same. But when it comes to managing a 
sales interview they are just as different as day 
and night. The “almoster” proceeds on the 
theory that if he doesn't sell his man today he 
will sell him tomorrow. 

The “finisher,” on the other hand, goes into 
a man's office with a firm determination that he 
is coming out with an order. He has not time 
60 


KNOWING WHEN TO CLOSE 


to nest on china eggs. Every word he speaks 
during the interview, every action he makes, is 
designed to accomplish one purpose—to close 
the sale today. The good closer cares little 
whether the buyer likes him personally. His one 
concern is “what does the buyer think about 
my goods?” The reason the percentage of one- 
call sales is so small is due largely to the idea 
so many salesmen cling to that they must be 
good fellows, must “stand in” with their pros¬ 
pects. This is true only to a certain point. The 
moment a salesman permits his own personality 
to overshadow his proposition, he lets slip his 
biggest asset when it comes to closing. The ideal \S 
salesman, like the ideal advertisement, seeks 
to focus all of the prospect's attention on the 
goods without diverting any of his thoughts into 
distracting channels. 

How a Real Estate Salesman Does It 

It is not possible to lay down hard and fast 
rules for closing. Every man must devise his 
own best method, must fit his own personality 
to the peculiar requirements of his business. But 
there are certain well established principles, used 
and found successful by men who have climbed 
high in sales work, that can be adapted to al¬ 
most every sales proposition. The most impor- 


61 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


tant of these principles have to do with selecting 
the right moment to close. 

A successful real estate salesman puts three 
closing “feelers” in his solicitation, their pur¬ 
pose being to locate the proper time to close. 
His first “feeler” is thrown out when he has 
passed the desire-creating stage and is ready to 
consider the map of the sub-division. In his 
mind he has already selected the block number, 
therefore, he briefly tells the buyer why he has 
selected that block, and then asks him which lot 
in the block he prefers. If the prospect shows 
favorable interest it is a signal that he is ready 
to be closed. The salesman takes out his con¬ 
tract then and there and signs him up. 

Don't Give Him a Chance to Say “No” 

If, on the other hand, the prospect says he 
is not yet ready to select a lot, the salesman 
goes right ahead with his arguments. He does 
not ask the prospect to buy at this point as that 
would give him an opportunity to say “No”—a 
position in which a good salesman will not allow 
himself to be placed. He then takes up the sec¬ 
ond phase of the selling talk which covers the 
easy payment plan. At the end of this talk he 
asks the man how he prefers to pay for the lot. 

62 




KNOWING WHEN TO CLOSE 


This is the second feeler. If the closing moment 
is at hand the man will begin to ask questions. 

If the prospect is not yet ready to be closed 
he will show no interest, in which case the sales¬ 
man passes on to the third phase of the solicita¬ 
tion which is designed to remove whatever objec¬ 
tions the prospect may have. At the end of this 
stage the salesman makes a direct play for the or¬ 
der by asking, “Mr. Blank, when will it be the 
most convenient for you to pay your monthly in¬ 
stalment? I can arrange it so that you may pay 
it either on the first or the fifteenth of the month, 
whichever time you prefer.” 

Another successful salesman selling a course 
of business training, offers the following sug¬ 
gestions : 

You Can't Close Too Quickly 

“You should be ready for your close not 
only at the completion of your demonstration, 
but at any time during the demonstration where 
the interest of the prospect seems to indicate the 
‘psychological moment/ When you reach such a 
condition, as you will in many cases, whether 
you are one-half through or one-third through, 
or at whatever point you are in your demonstra¬ 
tion, that is the time to go after the close. Other¬ 
wise you take the hazard of losing the interest 
and clouding the desire of the prospect, with the 


63 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


result that you lose the sale. If, for any reason, 
you fail to close by an early effort, you have lost 
nothing, because you have all the balance of 
your ammunition in reserve, and it will be com¬ 
paratively easy for you to revive your prospect's 
interest if you have the situation properly in 
hand. 

“There is no such thing as closing a pros¬ 
pect too quickly . When it is evident that he is 
ready to sign, that is the time to sign him up. 
Then, after he is sold, you can tell him all the 
things that it is desirable for him to know with 
just as good or even better effect than had you 
persisted in going through with the full stand¬ 
ardized demonstration before securing his order. 

Ask Only “Yes” Questions 

“Under whatever conditions you close a pros¬ 
pect, make it a rule never to leave him until he 
is in thorough understanding of the service, and 
the part he is to play in gaining the value and 
reward that he expects or that you have pictured. 

“Again, let us see if we can get to the close. 
The first and most important thing is to assume 
that your prospect is ‘sold' and by word and act 
to fully carry this assumption! Don't, don’t, 
DON’T, for example, ask him if he would not 
like to enroll for this^course and service. The 

64 




KNOWING WHEN TO CLOSE 


asking of such a question suggests that he may 
not desire to do so. At all events it puts the 
whole matter into a debatable status. It is a 
question that permits of two answers, yes or no. 
Any question asked should permit only of an 
affirmative answer, but questions of any char¬ 
acter are ordinarily not to be considered at this 
stage of your procedure. You are to make the 
affirmations for your prospect. You must help 
him to proceed along the lines of least resistance. 
Following the assumption that he is ‘sold’—and 
let me say again that this should always be the 
situation when you are at your closing point— 
you say something like this : 

Don’t Ask “No” Questions, Debate, or Argue 

“ ‘Most of our members do their studying 
at home, either in the evening or the early morn¬ 
ing. From my understanding of your situation 
I assume that program would best fit into your 
convenience.' At this point you will likely get 
an expression, either, ‘Yes' or the suggestion of 
some other hour. Whatever the reply, however, 
this leads you naturally to the statement, ‘Well, 
with this point disposed of, you will want your 
instruction and other material sent to your home 

address which is. .....' If, at this 

point, he supplies the address, you will at once 
65 





FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


write it up on the enrollment application and 
then hand him pen and enrollment application, 
calling his attention to place for signature. 

“Under circumstances other than the above, 
it might be well to use something like the fol¬ 
lowing: ‘I presume that you, like most of our 
members, do your reading and studying at home. , 
The usual reply to this will be ‘Yes, that is the 
only opportunity I find for that sort of thing.’ 
You will say, ‘That being the case, I will see 
that our instruction and lesson material are for¬ 
warded accordingly, and the initial material I 
can have sent to you either by parcel post or 
express as you may prefer; let’s see, your home 
address is.?’ And then pro¬ 

ceed as outlined in the first case. 

“Whatever you call some such process as 
this, whether the art of closing, or the mechanics 
of closing, or a combination of both, is of no 
material difference. Whatever you may call it, 
its value is unquestioned, and if you are not now 
using some such procedure as the above, you 
can improve your percentage of closures any¬ 
where from 25 to 100 per cent, or more, by a 
proper adaptation of the principle that I have 
here briefly endeavored to outline. This state¬ 
ment is in no manner exaggerated. I am speak¬ 
ing from experience. I have tried both ways 
66 





KNOWING WHEN TO CLOSE 


and for a period of several years I paid, in busi¬ 
ness lost, a big price for not knowing the value 
of properly applied affirmative suggestions ” 

Much of the success in closing a sale depends 
on your ability to “keep the buyer coming. ,, In 
other words, use tactics which will prevent him 
making an excuse or offering an objection. A 
thought that gets into words is always harder 
to combat than one that is unspoken. When a 
man has declared himself, a reversal of opinion 
or decision involves the matter of pride. “The 
best closing stunt I know of,” to quote Mr. Max¬ 
well again, “is to outline an order. It keeps 
before the buyer's eyes the picture of sales and 
profits that you have drawn and it keeps him 
in the picture.” 

The following chart of tactics to use in clos¬ 
ing is submitted by C. J. LeFleur of Detroit: 


Type of Buyer 

Characteristics 

Tactics to Use 

1. Overcautious 

Is slow and doubts. 
Will argue and reason. 
Is suspicious. 

Steadfast. 

Do not hurry him. 

Use cold logic. 
Proposition not too in¬ 
viting. 

Get his confidence. 

2. Clever 

Well informed. 

Not easily influenced. 
Seeks profit. 

Firm and decided. 

Cool and wary. 

Make talk short and 
PQinted. 

Reason—lead, don’t. 

drive him. 

Feature profit. 

Don’t persist if he re¬ 
fuses. 

Don’t rush, be firm. 


67 












FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


Type of Buyer 

Characteristics 

Tactics to Use 

3. Argumentative 

Intelligent. 

Talks well. 

Hard to convince. 
Deliberative. 

Will argue. 

. 

Must know your goods. 
You lead the line of 
thought. 

Don’t combat, but sug¬ 
gest. 

Use logical reason. 
Avoid argument. 

4. Conceited 

- 

Knows it all. 

Seldom reasons. 

Strong likes and dislikes. 
Desires power. 

Will be overbearing. 

Cater to his whims. 

Use suggestion. 

Be very agreeable. 
Appeal to his vanity. 
Don’t irritate or anger. 

5. Irritable 

Discourteous. 

Seeks justification. 
Steadfast. 

Bluffer. 

Admires cleverness and 
knowledge. 

Be calm and cool. 

Treat courteously. 

Win his confidence. 

Be firm and aggressive. 
Indirect methods and 
firmness. 

6. Flighty 

Agrees with you. 

Will not argue. 

Poor reasoner. 

Led and influenced. 
Sociable. 

Make him disagree. 

Get him to refuse, then 
begin. 

Use indirect suggestion. 
Know in a social way. 

7. Aggressive 

Takes reins in own 
hands. 

Attempts conduct inter¬ 
view in his way. 

Probably bluffing. 

Control situation by 
using positive state¬ 
ments. 

8. Braggart 

Desires Approval and 
Praise. 

Listen Patiently. 

Appear partially con¬ 
vinced. 

Be convinced and 
praise him. 

Take advantage of the 
relations which fol¬ 
low. 

9. Deceitful 

Weak on conscientious¬ 
ness. 

Weak on friendship. 

Weak on benevolence. 

Strong on inquisitive¬ 
ness. 

Strong on secretiveness. 

Extremely selfish. 

Undesirable customers. 

Impossible place confi¬ 
dence in them. 

Stick strictly to your 
text. 

Make all points per¬ 
fectly clear. 

Hold strictly to an 
agreement. 

Have everything strictly 
understood. 


68 



































PART THREE 


Overcoming Objections 

I—Turning Objections into Reasons for 
Buying. 

II—Disposing of Price Objections. 

III— The Old Stall, “I Never Had a Call.” 

IV— The Man Whose Business Is Differ¬ 

ent. 

Vi—“Come Back and See Me Later.” 



If the day looks kinder gloomy 
An’ your chances kinder slim, 

If the situations puzzlin’ 

An’ the prospect’s awful grim, 
An’ perplexities keep pressin’ 

’Til all hope is nearly gone, 

Jus’ bristle up an’ grit your teeth, 
An’ keep on keepin’ on. 

Fumin’ never wins a fight, 

An’ frettin’ never pays; 

There ain’t no good in broodin’ in 
Those passionate ways — 

Smile jus’ kinder cheerfully 
When hope is nearly gone, 

An’ bristle up an’ grit your teeth. 
An’ keep on keepin’ on. 

Author Unknown. 






I—Turning Objections into 
Reasons for Buying 

Any order-taker can “answer” objections. 
A man does not have to be a salesman to do 
that. Where the skill is required is in removing 
an objection without becoming involved in a 
long drawn-out discussion. Or better still, in 
taking the objection which the buyer has raised 
and turning it around into a reason for buying! 

A salesman for a duplicating machine was 
frequently called upon to meet the objection 
that a competitive machine had a greater speed, 
and consequently could turn out more work at 
a lower cost. Instead of building up a defense 
for this objection as he might well have done, the 
wily salesman admitted that his machine was 
slower than the other, and then went on to ex¬ 
plain that it was purposely made to run slower 
so that it could turn out a better quality of work. 
In this way he used the objection to put the sale 
on a quality basis which is always an advantage 
in itself. By showing the prospect how he could 
get better returns from carefully duplicated 
letters than he could from hastily duplicated 
circulars he put himself beyond all reach of 
competition. 

The Newport hot-water boiler is called upon 
71 


FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


to meet very keen competition from the Amer¬ 
ican Radiator Company and other energetic 
manufacturers. In order to sell boilers it is 
necessary for the salesman of the Newport Com¬ 
pany to convince the home owner of its fuel¬ 
saving capacity. So he frankly says at the out¬ 
set that he is selling the highest priced boiler 
on the market. The fact that he emphasizes 
the high price, which in reality is the main ob¬ 
jection encountered, not only emphasizes quality, 
but to a great extent removes the objection. 

MacMahon’s Biggest Sale 

One of the biggest sales ever made by the 
National Cash Register Company is credited to 
A. C. McMahon. Mr. McMahon's story of how 
he closed the deal by adopting the tactics of hit¬ 
ting back with the weapon handed him by the 
prospective buyer is not only interesting, but 
it nicely illustrates the point we are making: 

“My prospect was a large retail store. The 
management objected to our equipment, feeling 
that the method it was already using was more 
dignified. I knew that our equipment would 
speed up the making of change. So I bought 
goods for cash in each department of the store, 
timing with a stop-watch in my pocket the in¬ 
tervals between handing over my money and 

72 




TURNING OBJECTIONS INTO REASONS FOR BUYING 


receiving my change. This information I tab¬ 
ulated but I did not use it at once. I held it in 
reserve. 

“I had to meet a committee of executives em¬ 
powered to recommend our equipment. I knew 
that I had to sell the general manager before 
I could get the order. While I was demonstrat¬ 
ing the machine, by sheer chance one of the prin¬ 
cipals—let me call him Burke—entered. 

“ 'What's this?' Burke exclaimed. ‘A cash 
register in this store? It might be all right in 
a saloon, but not in.’ 

“ ‘What makes you think it would be good in 
a saloon?' I asked him with a smile. I took my 
argument for his, you see. • 

“ ‘I don't frequent saloons,' he answered. 
‘But I imagine it would be effective there.' 

“ ‘It is!' I assured him. (Again I used the 
weapon he handed me.) ‘And it would be just 
as effective in your store. The method you are 
now using gives you no absolute check. Besides, 
it's slow.’ 

“Then, as he thought, Burke crushed me: 

“ ‘The method which we use may not be quite 
as scientific as yours. But it has atmosphere 
and dignity. A customer hands over a $10 bill. 
After an interval her change is handed back to 
her, coming from she knows not where. That 


73 





FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


interval is impressive of our dignified atmo¬ 
sphere.' 

“But the argument merely gave me another 
weapon: 

“ ‘Do you suppose, Mr. Burke,' I said, ‘that 
the dignified moment of mystery would be less 
impressive if it were reduced from three min¬ 
utes, the time it now takes in the notions depart¬ 
ment, to twenty seconds?' 

“ ‘It doesn't take three minutes to get change 
in the notions department!' 

“I played my ace! 

“ ‘Here is my experience,' I said. ‘On this 
sheet I have tabulated the time I had to wait 
for change in each* department of your store; 
also the time it took me to make my selection. 
In the notions, for instance, it took me forty-eight 
seconds to select four papers of safety pins. 
The sale was twenty-eight cents. I gave the 
girl one dollar. She waited three minutes for 
the change to come back. In terms of percentage, 
approximately 70 per cent of her time is spent 
waiting for change and 30 per cent in selling. 
There are ten girls in that section. If you used 
our equipment, 70 per cent of a girl's time would 
be actual selling time, and 30 per cent waiting. 
As a matter of fact, six girls would handle the 
notions counter more effectively than ten do 

74 




TURNING OBJECTIONS INTO REASONS FOR BUYING 


now. And I can show you other possible sav¬ 
ings in every department/ 

“ ‘Let me see that list ! y said Burke. 

“Well, after that it was easy. I took his 
order for registers in six figures.” 

But regardless of whether or not you are 
able to hit back with the weapons a man hands 
you, it is always good salesmanship to treat ob¬ 
jections as though they were questions. A suc¬ 
cessful sales manager says in this connection: 

It’s All in the Way You Think 

“The attitude that a salesman often takes 
in going in to see a prospect is something like 
this: ‘Well, now, I wonder what excuse this 
fellow is going to try to “ring in” to turn me 
down? If he says his business is different, IT1 
show him just how ridiculous that argument is. 
If he says he is not interested before I've had 
a chance at him, I'll bawl him out. And if he 
says he is too busy, I'll give him the fight of his 
life, that's all there is to it.' 

“Contrasted with this your attitude should 
be something like this: ‘Well I'll just drop in 
on this fellow and tell him what I've got. If 
he doesn't absolutely want to listen—why he 
doesn't absolutely have to. I can find plenty 
75 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


who will. Furthermore, figuring on the law of 
averages, each man I don’t sell merely brings 
me that much nearer to the man I will sell. It 
makes just one less man that I have to see be¬ 
fore I land my one in three or one in four as 
the case may be. So I will just do him the 
favor of telling my story in a friendly, con¬ 
versational way.’ 

“There should be no straining, no tension, 
and no unnecessarily long answers to objections. 
In fact, if you will take this attitude there will 
be no objections. The things you think are ob¬ 
jections are in reality merely questions. Answer 
them in the same short, matter-of-fact manner 
in which your own brother might ask you about 
the proposition you are selling. 

“Your best days will be the days when this 
point of view is strong within you, and your 
best sales will be those in which the presentation 
is made in a real cozy, conversational and 
friendly, though forceful manner. 

Dominate Through Knowledge 

“These will be the days when you are mas¬ 
ter of the situation. You will dominate the 
interview. But you will not be conscious of 
having dominated. The dominating will be done 
through your thorough knowledge of your propo- 

76 




TURNING OBJECTIONS INTO REASONS FOR BUYING 


sition, your confidence in it, and your ability 
to communicate that confidence to your prospect 
in an easy, conversational, disarming manner.” 

“One of the first points in salesmanship,” 
says Saunders Norvell, chairman of the Board, 
McKesson & Robbins, “is not to go at your cus¬ 
tomer as being a better, or a wiser man, than 
he is. None of us know it all, and it is a tact¬ 
less thing to pretend that we do. You, my friend, 
no doubt can teach me many things, and I know 
it—I am still learning every day—-but let me 
put it down as a maxim of salesmanship, that 
the prospect should be approached in a modest 
spirit. Blustering antagonizes and excites preju¬ 
dice and suspicion; modesty invites faith and 
encourages confidence. The real salesman thinks 
more about what the prospect is thinking, than 
he does of what he is thinking himself. And at 
first, he asks more questions than he makes 
statements.” 

i 


77 




II—Disposing of Price 
Objections 

F. Edson White, vice-president of Armour 
& Company, in a recent bulletin to Armour sales¬ 
men, warns them especially against the danger 
of a good buyer befuddling them into comparing 
goods made to sell on quality, with goods made 
to sell on price. If you will keep that warning 
in the back of your head you will find that price 
objections dispose of themselves. A salesman 
who knows his business will steer clear of price 
comparisons of all kinds. He will sell functions 
and profits, not tonnage. 

Properly handled, a higher price is an ad¬ 
vantage rather than a disadvantage. There are 
a great many people who value a thing accord¬ 
ing to the price marked on the tag. During the 
recent boom in wages a piano dealer in a mining 
town ordered several inexpensive pianos and two 
high-priced instruments for window display pur¬ 
poses. Much to his surprise he sold the two ex¬ 
pensive instruments within a few days, but found 
a great deal of difficulty in selling the lower 
priced instruments until he hit upon the plan 
of doubling up the price. Then they went like 
hot cakes. The miners felt prosperous and were 
not satisfied with a “cheap piano.” They wanted 
78 


DISPOSING OF PRICE OBJECTIONS 


the same sort of an instrument as was found in 
the homes of the wealthy. Like most people they 
believed that the more they paid for a piano 
the better it was. If anybody had told this 
dealer, before this, that he could sell $750 pianos 
in his town, he would have insisted that it 
couldn’t be done. Yet it turned out that his low 
prices had been holding back business, and that 
after he put in a line of high-priced pianos he 
more than doubled his sales. 

What Buyers Are Paid to Say 

In exactly the same way there are a lot of 
salesmen who grumble when it is necessary for 
their house to raise prices. They let the idea 
become fixed in their minds that the new prices 
are too high. And of course they are too high. 
When you make up your mind that such and such 
a thing is wrong with your line, you will find 
any number who will agree with you. When it 
comes to price, every buyer will insist that your 
price is too high, for that is what he is paid to 
say. 

A well-known concern making an adver¬ 
tised brand of shirts found itself selling in com¬ 
petition with some back bedroom manufacturers 
who were cutting prices unmercifully. These 
fly-by-night manufacturers would come around 
79 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


and offer all sorts of inducements to get the 
business away from the reputable concern. 
To help meet the situation the sales manager 
for the concern asked each salesman in the or¬ 
ganization how he was overcoming the objection. 
Here are some of the replies: 

* * * 

The same materials can be made into a num¬ 
ber of different priced garments. For example, 
a cheap clothing manufacturer can make a suit 
from the same material as a high class manu¬ 
facturer, but it does not follow that the two suits 
are the same value and will give the same sat¬ 
isfaction to the customer. The same applies 
to shirts. It all depends upon what your cus¬ 
tomer gets for his money, the class of trade that 
you are catering to, and the class of business 
that you want to build up. 

* * * 

Sell Quality Not Price 

We have set a standard and every-shirt 

must come up to this standard. If it does not, 
we do not allow it to leave our factory. Even 

the thread that goes into a - shirt is tested 

for its strength. Standard pearl buttons are 
used; the neck bands are pre-shrunk, carefully 
80 





DISPOSING OF PRICE OBJECTIONS 


made, and carefully starched and ironed. Now, 
all of these things cost money. 

Then again, we cut our shirts full. We know 
some concerns that turn out shirts from two to 
three yards on the dozen less than we do. We 
could make shirts just as cheap as any of our 
competitors. It is no trick at all to make cheap 
merchandise, but it is a trick, and a mighty hard 
one to master, to make high-class merchandise 
that always comes up to a standard that is satis¬ 
factory to the consuming public. 

A solid foundation cannot be built up by any 
retailer that does not carry standard reputable 
merchandise. Let our name become connected 
with yours and let us work together. 

* * * 

Price Is a Matter of Habit 

It is well to remember that prices are high 
or low only by comparison. If a man is accus¬ 
tomed to paying five cents for a certain cigar, 
he thinks of a thirty cent Romeo and Juliet as 
a high-priced cigar. On the other hand, if he 
is in the habit of buying three for a dollar cigars, 
he would think of the Romeo and Juliet cigar 
as low-priced. If you had never before purchased 
sugar and went into a store to buy a pound, you 
would think nothing of paying twenty cents for 

n 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


it. You would have nothing to compare the 
price with. You would reason that it was worth 
twenty cents to you to have your coffee sweetened 
for a week, and cheerfully pay the price asked. 
For exactly the same reason, price objections 
against a new article can often be overcome by 
establishing an exaggerated basis for comparison 
in the mind of the buyer, so that when the price 
is given it will sound comparatively small. 

“We have a wrench to sell for $7.50,” says 
R. A. Pickard, vice-president of A. J. Pickard 
& Co., a New York hardware house, “which 
is an unheard of price for this kind of an article. 
But it will do work that cheaper wrenches will 
not do. One of our men sold 95 per cent of the 
people he called on by using the following plan: 

Preparing the Buyer’s Mind 

“He would see a man working on a particu¬ 
larly hard bolt such as the No. 4 connecting rod 
on a Ford car, and would say to him, ‘Would 
you give $15.00 for a tool that would pull that 
nut off the first crack out of the box?' The 
man would generally reply something like this, 
‘No, I would give $25.00/ whereupon the sales¬ 
man would answer, ‘You don’t have to, here is 
one for $7.50/ and then would show his sample. 
In some cases the mechanic was bluffing, but 




DISPOSING OF PRICE OBJECTIONS 


on calling his bluff in this way he was forced to 
buy the wrench or place himself in a very em¬ 
barrassing position to try to back out of it. 

“This one salesman disposed of almost 100 
wrenches at $7.50 apiece in less than two weeks' 
time, whereas, previous to this, the highest priced 
wrenches we had ever sold were two and three 
dollars." 

Still another method of overcoming price 
objections is by “easing the price to the buyer" 
instead of making a flat quotation. “In my 
former experience of selling cement hardener," 
says Ladson Butler, manager of the salesmen's 
educational department for Yawman & Erbe 
Manufacturing Company, “any mention of price 
would immediately create an adverse decision in 
the buyer's mind. The price difficulty would 
invariably arrive at an early stage of the inter¬ 
view, long before I would have an opportunity 
to prove the many values of the hardener. I 
would meet this by saying that it would cost a 
very small percentage of a new floor. When 
pressed for a direct answer, I would quote the 
price per square foot, which would be about 2% 
cents. This often allowed us to go ahead with 
the interview without further discussion of price, 
as few men realize the relatively small area of 
one square foot. 

“Another condition where this question has 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


arisen and where there is a possibility of the 
customer making a choice between two or more 
selections, I would meet by asking the customer 
which combination or selection he wanted and 
how he intended to use it, and then, without giv¬ 
ing him a chance to reply, I would tell the price 
depended entirely on his own judgment as to 
what he needed. From here I would try to swing 
back to the selling talk again. However, I know 
that I have lost sales because my customer knew 
that I was side-stepping his question, and a bad 
impression made in this way was more difficult 
to overcome than the price question itself would 
have been.” 

The tactics used by A. C. MacMahon, holder 
of the National Cash Register Company's chal¬ 
lenge cup for salesmanship, are somewhat simi¬ 
lar in principle, though different in detail. “A 
prospect,” says Mr. MacMahon, “is constantly 
thinking of the price of the article during its 
explanation, and will not consider advantages 
until price is removed. I would recommend put¬ 
ting the price of the commodity on a blackboard 
or pad as large as I could consistently make the 
figures, and then by a process of elimination 
reduce the figures by showing how easily it can 
be paid for. For example: If I were selling an 
article for a thousand dollars ($1,000.00), I 
would first prove that money is only worth what 
84 




DISPOSING OF PRICE OBJECTIONS 


I can get for it, and at 6 per cent is only worth 
$60.00 per year. After reducing the thousand 
dollars, I would, by further process of reduc¬ 
tion, if selling on deferred payments, reduce 
them to monthly payments, then weekly, then 
days, then, if certain persons were interested in 
it, so much per person. Then the price does not 
look so big. 

“Do not let price of an article blind your 
buyer. You can shut the sun out of your eyes 
with a half dollar and you can't see the sun at 
all, yet it is much bigger. Cork costs only a few 
cents a pound, but it is not what cork costs but 
what cork saves, particularly if a man is drown¬ 
ing about four miles from shore." 

Meeting Price Interruptions 

The most serious form of price objection is 
the premature interruption. Just as you are 
getting into the swing of your presentation the 
buyer suddenly breaks in with: “How much does 
it cost?" What tactics should be followed? Is 
it best to quote the price then and there, and 
take a chance on losing the sale, or is it better 
to side-step? Opinions differ. One salesman 
says, “Give the price so that the buyer will dis¬ 
miss it from his mind." Another says, “Change 
the subject, get him off on another tack.” Norval 
85 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


Hawkins, for twelve years sales manager for the 
Ford Motor Company, offers the following sug¬ 
gestion in an article which appeared in the No¬ 
vember, 1919, issue of Sales Management: 

“So much depends on the individual cir¬ 
cumstances of the particular sale, that a gen¬ 
eral rule cannot be made to fit all cases. I would 
say, however, that the salesman at all stages of 
the sale should be the dominating factor and 
should not let the other party control the selling 
process. If it is necessary in order to continue 
control of the selling process for the salesman 
to evade the price objection temporarily, he 
should postpone that point in a masterly way 
yet without giving any offense. The salesman, 
however, must always be very careful not to seem 
to be dodging. If he is working to stimulate 
desire, and does not want to be diverted, to han¬ 
dle the price objection the salesman may well 
look frankly at the prospect, straight in the 
eye, smile, and say, ‘Pardon me Mr. Blank, but 
we haven't finished looking at the value of this 
article yet. The price, of course, is only relative. 
With your permission I will show you the full 
value and then we will consider the price and 
the worth of the article to you/ 

“Of course these conventional words are 
not what he would use, but the idea is that the 
salesman should assert his mastery of the selling 
86 




DISPOSING OP PRICE OBJECTIONS 


process in an agreeable manner. He then will 
be able to carry on the stimulation of desire 
before setting the price, as in most cases is the 
better practice.” 

In all matters of price it is a good idea to 
quote prices firmly and decidedly. Do not act 
as though you are afraid they will bite. If a 
new scale of prices has recently gone into effect, 
do not suggest to the buyer that you will try to 
put the order through at the old rate. Such 
tactics will at once suggest weakness on your 
part, and invite further controversy. Moreover, 
it is weak salesmanship to have to cut prices in 
this way, even though it may be within your 
power to do so. It is nothing more nor less than 
favoring your trade against your house. Every 
order that you take in this way simply means 
that you are handing the buyer so much of your 
company's cash. You might just as well go 
to the cash box, take out the money and give 
it to your customer. You wouldn't think of 
dipping into your own pocket and handing the 
customer a ten or twenty-dollar bill, would you? 
Then why dip into your employer's pocket and 
hand out his money? Anyone can sell goods— 
the idea is to sell them at a profit by getting the 
full price. You won't get the full price if you 
haven't the courage to come out manfully and 
ask for it. 


87 




Ill—The Old Stall “I Never 
Had a Call” 

This objection is frequently encountered 
when introducing an advertised product. The 
buyer wants to wait before stocking the line 
“until he has a call.” His attitude is that he 
already has competing brands that are selling 
well and that he does not care to increase his 
stock. Secretly he may be thinking that he can 
substitute if he does have a call. At best it is 
but a “stall.” Yet, if you are not on guard, you 
will gradually find yourself in the position of 
letting the buyer sell you instead of you selling 
the buyer. Just as the continual dropping of 
water will wear away a soft stone, so the con¬ 
tinual repetition of this objection will gradually 
wear away a salesman's combativeness. He will 
begin to think, “That must be pretty poor adver¬ 
tising we are doing. It isn't creating any de¬ 
mand at all.” 

“Printers' Ink,” the leading advertising jour¬ 
nal of the country, points out that demand is 
seldom expressed vocally. It is, therefore, bad 
tactics for a salesman to place himself in a posi¬ 
tion where the prospect can say to him: “I'll buy 
anything as soon as there is a demand for it. 
Create a demand for your stuff and I'll stock 
88 


THE OLD STALL “I NEVER HAD A CALL” 


it.” The better plan is to assume that the ad¬ 
vertising your concern is doing is not intended 
to send consumers rushing to the dealer's store, 
clamoring for your product. In the good old 
days of patent medicine advertising this did hap¬ 
pen, but it is different today. Advertising acts 
just as effectively, but it works under the sur¬ 
face. The demand that it creates is there just 
the same, but it is a silent demand. 

You Can't Always Feel Demand 

“The other day,” says “Printers' Ink,” “a 
merchant told us that several years ago when 
aluminum paring knives first came out, he re¬ 
fused to stock them because he did not believe 
they would sell. He attempted to close the in¬ 
terview with the salesman by saying, 'Bring me a 
demand and I'll buy.' On further persuasion, 
however, and because the amount involved was so 
small, this retailer bought three dozen of the 
knives. As soon as the shipment had been dis¬ 
played, one woman after another on coming into 
the store exclaimed, 'Oh, here are those new 
knives I've been reading about.' The three dozen 
sold out in two days. The item turned out to be 
one of the briskest sellers in the house-furnishing 
department of the store. The merchant says that 
the incident taught him a lesson that has been 
very valuable to him. 


89 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


“A few days ago a New York druggist re¬ 
ceived, by mistake, with some other goods, a 
card holding three dozen of these new 'radium' 
light indicators, which are hung on the end of 
an electric bulb chain to point out its where¬ 
abouts in the dark. Up to that time, the druggist 
did not even know that such things existed. He 
decided to stick the card up prominently in his 
store and if the indicators didn't sell in a few 
days, he would still have time to send them back. 

A Salesman Who Couldn’t Be Stalled 

"To his utter amazement the next customer 
who entered the store bought three of the bulbs. 
She said that she saw them recently in the home 
of a friend, and if her husband liked them she 
would send him back that evening for three more 
'before they were all gone.' In a couple of days 
the druggist had to get the manufacturer on 
the phone to tell him to rush out six dozen more 
of those 'blamed indicators that everybody in 
the country seems to be wanting.' Yet that drug¬ 
gist never had a call for those lights! 

"We used to know a salesman, who, when 
confronted with the no-demand objection would 
say, ‘let me display my samples in the front of 
your store for half an hour and I'll show you 
very convincingly that while people may not be 
90 




THE OLD STALL “I NEVER HAD A CALL 1 


asking for these goods, still they want them 
and will buy them if given a chance/ This offer 
usually called the buyer's bluff/' 

One of the best letters I have ever read on 
this subject of “I never had a call” was written 
by a prominent sales manager to one of his men 
about a year ago. Here is the letter: 

Dear Bob. 

/ was just noting from your route-list that in a 
week or so you would be hitting into new territory 
with our brand, when your letter of the 3rd came in 
requesting a little information on a condition that 
you feel will crop up in this field of introductory work. 

You want to know how best to handle the man 
who says “he never had a call/* “will wait until the 
demand is created/* “satisfied with his old brands/* 
etc., and again etc. 

Just as sure as two and two are four, I know that 
you have already sharpened your wits to cut down 
this moss-covered excuse, but you are raising your 
hand to ask a question just to see what the “teacher** 
has to say — that*s using your head, Vll say it is. 

/ am not going to make answer to your question 
in categorical fashion—that is, if the dealer says so and 
so, you should reply so and so—but instead will try to 
make you acquainted with this type of dealer and the 
ridiculousness and inconsistency of his stall. 

To start off with, this excuse originated in 1200 B.C., 
and is pulled in every city and hamlet in the country 
by certain dealers every time a brand makes its initial 
bow. 

Give an ear to a legitimate reason why a dealer 
can*t buy, but go deaf and dumb when this “wait for 
a demand** excuse is handed out to you. 

91 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


Now, just consider this dealer for a minute. When 
he decided to get into business, he selected his town 
and maybe the location of his store. Then he waited 
until the “citizens of our fair city** petitioned him to 
start his “merchandise emporium.** In other words, 
he waited for a “call** from the inhabitants before he 
opened up. He did all this, didn*t he? Well, he did 
not. He opened up with the belief that he would have 
salable goods for them when they did call, and if he is 
still awake to the game of today, he knows he must 
occasionally stock a new brand to keep pace with the 
consumer in his quest for something new. Don*t you 
see that adding a new brand now and then without a 
call is the same thing in principle as opening up his 
store at the start without a call ? 

Let*s try to figure out how this dealer obtained 
his original stock. With his four bare walls and an 
empty showcase, did he wait until the folks came in 
and specified their choice, and then made purchases, 
so that at the end of 288 or 289 days he had a fairly 
complete stock? Did he do this? / ask you. Not on 
your life. 

All brands were new to him then and not one mite 
older than your brand is to him today. Your brand 
may be new to him, but can he say it is new and un¬ 
wanted by his customers? Does he base its newness 
on the fact that he never has had a call for it, and then 
change his views if John Smith comes in and asks for 
it? And with our advertising promotion work isn*t 
he bound to “have a call**? Does he strengthen his 
good will with his customers by waiting for a demand 
before he buys? 

Did you ever stop to think why you go to the post- 
office for stamps? Funny question, isn*t it? But 
listen, you go to the postoffice for stamps because you 
know you can get them therel That*s why, too, a lot 
of trade don*t go to some stores for up-to-date mer¬ 
chandise because they doubt if it can be purchased in 
the “wait for a call** store. 




THE OLD STALL “I NEVER HAD A CALL” 


Of course this dealer will harp on being satisfied 
with the old brands—they suit his trade—why make a 
change? Is it really his love for these old brands, or his 
unreasonable dislike of a new one that inspires this 
prejudice? Don*t you know that the oldest and best¬ 
selling brand he now carries was at one time just as 
new as yours? Suppose he had always used this same 
argument on all the other one-time new brands! In 
a brief period his store would have run a race with the 
graveyard. 

When you get right down to it, what license has 
he to say that his trade is satisfied with his present 
brand? Might they not like a new brand better if they 
had a chance to compare its merits, and wouldn*t Mr. 
Consumer cuddle up a little closer to the dealer that 
put him next? 

For the names and addresses of the dealers you 
have pulled from the mire of “I never had a call,** I 
shall look on the yellow sheets of paper, same size as 
this letter, but starting off with **Please ship to—** 
commonly known as order sheets. I run no chances 
in believing you will use quite a few sheets next week 
—and always. 


93 




IV—The Man Whose Business 
is Different 

Buyers, like sheep, follow the leader. But 
they won’t admit it. When you tell them about 
some other concern that is making a big profit 
on what you are offering, or that has found 
your article superior to some other article, they 
invariably say to you, “Yes, that is all very well 
for those people, but my business, you know, 
is different.” And then they proceed with great 
detail to explain to you just what a peculiar busi¬ 
ness they have and how different it is from any 
other business on earth. 

A skillful salesman plans his presentation so 
that the buyer cannot raise this objection when 
confronted with the evidence of what others in 
his line are doing. He paints his sales picture 
with the buyer well in the foreground, and 
although he constantly refers to how others use 
the thing he is selling, he never for a moment un¬ 
hooks the other man’s business from the business 
of his prospect. 

Suppose, for example, that you are selling 
typewriters. Suppose, further that your terri¬ 
tory is in New England, and you are in a little 
town in New Hampshire. There is a lawyer in 
this town—a prominent, well-to-do attorney, who 
94 


THE MAN WHOSE BUSINESS IS DIFFERENT 


has in his office a veritable rattletrap of a type¬ 
writer. It is up to you to sell him a brand-new 
self-starting Remington. How would you go 
about it? The chances are that you would go to 
him and tell him, as best you could, why he ought 
to have a new typewriter. Knowing the small 
town buyer you would, of course, tell him of 
others in that town who used your machine. But 
back in his head he would be thinking all the 
time: “that old typewriter gets my work out, why 
spend money just for a few new-fangled im¬ 
provements?” But he wouldn’t tell you that. 
To you he would say: “It is all right for Mr. 
Brown to buy a new model typewriter. He is in 
such and such a business. But I have compar¬ 
atively little work to do, and it wouldn’t pay me 
to put in a new machine.” He would say that to 
you if you left him that opening. 

It is good salesmanship to “lock the stable 
door before the steed is stolen.” So you would 
probably do just as one successful salesman did 
under these exact conditions. Before calling on 
a lawyer prospect, he sat down in his room at the 
hotel and typed a page of legal cap on a disrepu¬ 
table old machine that he had taken in exchange. 
The typing was blotchy, broken and out of align¬ 
ment. Next he typed a similar page with one of 
the newest and best machines he had. With this 
material in hand he called upon the lawyer. 

95 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


“Mr. Lawyer,” he began, “when you go be¬ 
fore a jury you are particular as to your address. 
You make sure that your clothes are carefully 
pressed; that your shoes are polished; that your 
linen is immaculate—and you would never think 
of appearing in court with your face unshaven. 
Why? You would be just as good a lawyer, no 
matter what your appearance. Your arguments 
would be just as forceful. But you are afraid 
that a poor appearance might lessen other’s opin¬ 
ion of your ability—create a bad impression, in 
other words. 

A Demonstration That Convinced 

“Mr. Lawyer, you don’t always get an oppor¬ 
tunity to present your cases in person. Some¬ 
times you are asked to submit briefs. How do 
you get up your briefs? Like this [showing the 
poorly typed sheet] so that their slovenly ap¬ 
pearance detracts from the forcefulness of their 
arguments? Or like this [showing the neatly 
typed sheet] immaculate and pleasing in dress 
so that they produce a favorable impression even 
before they are read?” 

Needless to say such an attack would break 
through. The point of it bore down so hard right 
on the lawyer’s business that he could not 
dodge it. 




THE MAN WHOSE BUSINESS IS DIFFERENT 


When a man tells you that his business is 
different you want to begin to ask yourself ques¬ 
tions. It is the signal to you that you have not 
given enough thought to the buyer's problems or, 
to put it in specialty terms, you have not put 
enough thought on the pre-approach. Always 
remember that sales, like legal battles, are won 
the night before. 

Bloom Gives Them Absent Treatments 

Fred Bloom, one of the most consistent busi¬ 
ness producers in the entire Protectograph organ¬ 
ization is of the opinion that it is possible to make 
sales in your room after supper just as easily as 
it is to make them in the prospect's office during 
the day. He says: “Some salesmen believe in 
'absent treatment.' By that, I mean thinking 
about a prospect and planning just how you 
should approach him, and what particular argu¬ 
ment you can use to best advantage on him. I 
know several salesmen who actually think the 
prospect onto the dotted line, and then go around 
the next day and get the signature by following 
out the line of attack which they thought out the 
night before." 

You will invariably find that the salesmen 
who give the most thought to what they are going 
to say before they confront a buyer usually are 

97 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


the most consistent producers of business, and 
seldom meet the objection that “my business is 
different.” 

Through the courtesy of W. C. Dunlap, gen¬ 
eral sales manager of the American Multigraph 
Sales Company, we quote from the sales manual 
used by that organization on the subject of the 
“Pre-approach”: 

“A sale is largely made in preparation. The 
object of the first preparation is to enable the 
salesman to secure all the information he can re¬ 
garding his prospect and his prospect’s business 
in order to make an intelligent approach, and to 
enable him to study the conditions surrounding 
the individual or firm under consideration. 

The Four Steps to Your Preparation 

“There are four subjects to be considered in 
securing complete information for the first prep¬ 
aration—(1) the man; (2) the merchandise; 
(3) the market; (4) the methods. 

“When the salesman knows his own business 
thoroughly, knows his prospect, the line of mer¬ 
chandise he handles, the market he serves or can 
serve—be it local, national, foreign, any or all— 
and the methods being used, he is in possession 
of the required information for the first approach 
—he has his first preparation. 

98 




THE MAN WHOSE BUSINESS IS DIFFERENT 


“There are many things to be learned about 
each of the four subjects above. 

“(1) The Man. The things essential to a 
clear understanding of the man to be approached 
may be summed up by a consideration of the 
following points—reputation, character, accom¬ 
plishments, accessibility, association. If he has 
associates whose opinions he is accustomed to 
consider in any important decision, each asso¬ 
ciate should be analyzed by the salesman from 
the five points given. It is sometimes possible to 
secure information prior to the approach cover¬ 
ing these additional characteristics—tempera¬ 
ment, mental characteristics, suppressed function 
and point of contact. 

“(2) The Merchandise. In considering the 
merchandise it is necessary that it be looked at 
from the following viewpoints—kind, quality, 
demand, quantity, application, peculiarities, and 
whether a necessity, a convenience or a luxury. 
Study these points carefully, for much depends 
upon them in working out the balance of the 
preparation. 

“(3) The Market. After considering the 
man and his merchandise, the next thing in 
sequence is to consider the market he is now serv¬ 
ing, or the market he may serve, by getting a 
broad view of his own business. To do this analy- 
99 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


tically it is important that it should be considered 
from the following standpoints—neighborhood, 
section of the city, center of suburban travel, city 
scope, section of the state, one or more states, 
national, international. 

“(4) The Methods. In taking up methods 
it is necessary to keep three factors in mind— 
the methods the customer uses to induce trade; 
the methods he uses that are not covered by our 
methods of advertising; the methods he is using 
or may use that are covered by our method of 
advertising and business building, such as per¬ 
sonal letters, folders, pamphlets, booklets, etc. 

“In order that all of these facts may be 
studied in their proper relation to each other, 
whenever possible the first preparation should be 
written. Until the salesman has a preparation 
which he considers adequate to enable him to 
form an intelligent approach, he should not at¬ 
tempt to cover any other steps. Any additional' 
facts which merit consideration should enter into 
this preparation. The preparation should be so 
thorough that the salesman knows every time he 
puts his foot down he steps on solid ground, and 
he must be fully convinced himself that the pros¬ 
pect is losing money every day he is without the 
multigraph.” 


100 




V—“Come Back and See Me 
Later” 

A salesman by the name of Hopkins selling 
a set of books tells about interviewing the presi¬ 
dent of a large manufacturing plant. He pre¬ 
sented his proposition and was told to come back 
after the prospect had a chance to think it over. 
So he dismissed the matter from his mind except 
to make out a regular report form on which he 
wrote opposite remarks: “Wants to think it 
over” 

Three months later the salesman called on 
this prospect again. He gave him a thirty minute 
interview and was again told “I want to think it 
over” 

The salesman wishing to be agreeable took 
the man at his word and left the office. That 
night at the hotel he made out a report on the 
call, with the first report in front of him. There 
was one dated October 21, on which was written: 
Wants to think it over ” 

And here was another three months later on 
which he had just written: “Wants to think it 
over” 

When the salesman's eyes fell on the two 
reports with the same old excuse and the inter¬ 
vening time between he could not reconcile them 
101 


FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


with the man's position. Surely the man did not 
mean what he said. He decided to find out. The 
next morning he went back to the prospect and 
laid the two cards before him. He had called the 
prospect's bluff. He signed up then and there. 

The Plan Used by Jerry Ambrose 

If a buyer is really a prospect for what you 
are selling, he is just as good a prospect at the 
first interview as he will ever be again—in fact a 
better one. Even if you get the order on the sec¬ 
ond call you have wasted the time. Every time 
you call on a prospect after having once asked 
him for an order you are weaker in the eyes of 
two men—your prospect and yourself. The cus¬ 
tomer respects the man who convinces and sells 
him more than the man who allows himself to be 
put off. 

One of the most consistent producers of busi¬ 
ness in the life insurance field is Jerry Ambrose, 
of the Detroit agency of the Mutual Benefit Life 
Insurance Company. Up to October, 1919, he 
had produced business every week for 303 con¬ 
secutive weeks. He produced daily business for 
two six-month periods. Ambrose states that he 
owes his success to his method of forcing the 
buyer to decide now. “Instead of circling, I cir¬ 
culate" is the way he expressed it. “I haven't 
time to nest on china eggs." 

102 




COME BACK AND SEE ME LATER 


Ambrose used to be an iron puddler. He 
gets most of his business from men in industrial 
positions—foremen, superintendents and the like. 
When the buyer tells him that he wants to think 
it over, or suggests that he call back later, Am¬ 
brose plays for an immediate decision. 

“Mr. Prospect/' he will say, “you hold a very 
important position here. It is plain that your 
concern attaches a great deal of value to your 
ability.” To which the prospect inwardly agrees, 
and begins to think that Mr. Ambrose is a pretty 
smart fellow. “Now, Mr. Prospect,” continues 
the tactful salesman, “has it ever occurred to you 
why you hold this position instead of John over 
there, or Tom over here?” 

The prospect, being human, swells up a bit 
more and listens for the reason: “The reason 
John over there is working for you, Mr. Prospect, 
instead of you working for John, is that you can 
decide important questions without taking a week 
or two to think them over and talk them over. 
It is your ability to make decisions that puts you 
in your present position, and that is why I am 
going to ask you to decide now whether you want 
this protection or not.” 

In closing orders remember that the greatest 
weakness of human nature is hesitating to make 
a decision. The skilful salesman will therefore 
assist the buyer to decide, rather than to buy. 

103 




Making the Most of Time 

The great men in the world have never been 
time wasters. They have always used the extra 
hours that the ordinary man wasted, to push a 
bit further ahead in the race. 

Frederick the Great rose every morning at 
4:30 and attended to his correspondence before 
breakfast. Napoleon Bonaparte averaged only 
four hours sleep. Benjamin Franklin could not 
afford to waste a minute. He placed a rack in 
the bathtub, so that while he was in the water 
he could read a book. Voltaire was an incessant 
worker. He was a contractor and a great manu¬ 
facturer as well as a great writer. He usually 
dined at nine o’clock at night and was continually 
late to dinner because he could not leave his 
tasks. Thomas A. Edison works eighteen hours 
a day. 

There are some salesmen who permit them¬ 
selves to think that, having secured a good order, 
they can rest on their oars. This is a big mistake. 
In the first place there is no better time to drive 
for business than right after you have closed a 
sale. Your success gives you “momentum.” 

The Wall Street Journal recently made an 
investigation which brings out clearly the impor¬ 
tance of conserving time during the ages of 
twenty to fifty. These figures show that at forty- 
104 


MAKING THE MOST OP TIME 


five years of age, ninety per cent of us meet with 
business reverses. At fifty, ninety-five per cent 
lose all. At sixty only one man in 5,000 can re¬ 
cover financial footing, and ninety-five per cent of 
us are dependent on our relatives or charity for 
support . If you are to escape the law of aver¬ 
ages you must strike hard telling blows during 
your producing years, which reach their peak at 
thirty and start their decline at forty-five. After 
you have passed twenty and until you have 
reached fifty every hour of time represents nearly 
three hours of your life from a production stand¬ 
point. 

J. T. Skelly, vice-president of the Hercules 
Powder Company, has compiled a table whereby 
each salesman can easily visualize the capital 
value of his time. The table follows: 


Income 

year 

Income 

month 

Income 

day 

Income 
30 min. 

Value 30 
minutes 
daily per 
year 

Capital on 
which loss 
pays 
interest 

$5,000 

4,000 

3,000 

2,000 

1,500 

$416.67 

333.33 

250.00 

166.67 

125.00 

$16.67 

13.33 

10.00 

6.67 

5.00 

$1.04 

.83 

.63 

.41 

.31 

$312.00 

249.00 

189.00 

123.00 

93.00 

$6,240.00 

4,980.00 

3,780.00 

2,460.00 

1,860.00 


By referring to this table you can quickly 
determine three very important things: (1) the 
money waste represented each time you let thirty 
minutes go by without accomplishing something, 
(2) the money waste of thirty minutes of your 
time a day for a year, and (8) the capital which 
105 














FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


your company could borrow and pay interest on 
with this wasted time. 

“Most of us waste at least thirty minutes 
each day in one way or another,” Mr. Skelly said 
in the bulletin calling this table to the attention 
of the Hercules sales force. “If this is true in 
your case, you will see by analyzing the above 
table that the amount of money paid to you by 
the company for this unprofitable or unproduc¬ 
tive time would more than pay the interest on 
borrowed capital to the extent of your salary, 
drawing account or commissions. 

The Cash Value of Time 

“In other words, if you put this non-produc¬ 
tive thirty minutes to work, the resulting saving 
to your company would enable it to add to its 
working capital—in case it wished to borrow 
additional capital—more than the amount of 
what it pays you each year. We are entering a 
period in which the conservation of every re¬ 
source, including our time, is a vital necessity. 
Let us begin now to save as much as we can.” 

Time saving means more than getting an 
early start and making every minute return to 
you a minute's value. It means utilizing your 
time to best advantage. There are many sales¬ 
men who work hard ten hours a day but accom¬ 
plish little. They spend time flitting from office 
106 




MAKING THE MOST OP TIME 


to office, and from town to town, that should be 
spent in contact with buyers . Real time con¬ 
servation means time systematization. You can 
usually tell a systematic salesman by the large 
amount of time that he seems to have . He an¬ 
swers his letters promptly. He sends in his 
expense accounts properly made out and mails 
them promptly. All his work seems to be done 
with machine-like regularity. Yet these sales¬ 
men have the same twenty-four hours to work in 
that the unsystematic kind have, but they plan 
their work and work their plan. 

Provide for Eventualities 

I once asked our best salesman how he man¬ 
aged things and he replied that he answered all 
letters on the train between towns. It was his 
custom to write a reply in pencil on the back of 
the letter to him. I suppose the other salesmen 
devote this time to playing pinochle or gazing out 
of the car windows. “Then,” said this great sales¬ 
man, “I always post my expense account while I 
am waiting for my meals to be served. It is a 
simple matter to remember expenses from one 
meal to another, and after I have ordered what I 
want, there is always a wait of a few minutes 
until the food comes, so I use this time for enter¬ 
ing up my expenses.” 


107 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


The telephone properly used in making 
engagements is a great time saver. I remember 
a case where two salesmen went to a certain town 
on the railroad and expected to drive from there 
to another town some distance in the interior. 
Each of these salesmen had several trunks. One 
salesman had the forethought to telephone the 
livery stable to have their wagon meet him at the 
train. The other salesman Trusted to luck/ One 
salesman arrived in town and immediately 
started on the drive for the interior. There was 
not a moment lost. The livery stable had only 
one wagon, so the other salesman had to wait 
until the next day. 

Now, the point I wish to make is that it was 
the state of mind of one salesman to always an¬ 
ticipate —look ahead and provide for eventuali¬ 
ties, and it was the state of mind of the other 
salesman to just take a chance and, as a result, 
he constantly lost time and opportunities, and of 
course all this loss showed up in the end in his 
results. 

Stall and you will be stalled; delay and you 
will be delayed—it's an age-old story. While his 
competitors fuddled around thinking of nothing 
in particular and doing it faultlessly, Andrew 
Carnegie slipped over to England and secured 
the rights to the American use of the new Bes¬ 
semer process for making steel and brought back 
108 




MAKING THE MOST OP TIME 


with him a dozen experts to make it here. With 
Bessemer-made steel to offer to the buyer, few in 
America wanted the other kind, and in a few 
years Andrew Carnegie had the steel business of 
the nation in the palm of his hand. Millions 
poured into his lap. Thinking ahead pays. 

Why Salesmen Fail 

Taking two salesmen of equal ability with 
equal opportunities, when one saves twenty per 
cent more time than the other, naturally, his sales 
will be twenty per cent greater, and it must be 
remembered that when it takes a certain amount 
of business to pay overhead charges, it is the ex¬ 
tra business that a salesman obtains over his 
quota, as it were, that is the most profitable to 
him, as well as to his house. 

A recent investigation among salesmen in a 
wide variety of businesses showed that lack of in¬ 
dustry was by far the most common cause for 
failure. The tabulation follows: 

WHY SALESMEN FAIL 
(207 Cases Under Observation) 

Lack of Industry. 

Failure to follow Instructions. 

Lack of Tact and Courtesy. 

Lack of Stick-to-it-iveness. 

Lack of Confidence-holding Qualities . 

Lack of Knowledge regarding Line. 

Unable to Withstand the Counter-Offensive of Buyers 

Went Stale . 

Poor Health. 

Dishonesty .•.. 

Miscellaneous . 


.18% 

. 12 % 

, . 8 % 

, . 8 % 
. . 7 % 
. . 6 % 
.. 4% 
. 3% 

. . 2 % 
. . 2 % 


109 















FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


Now it is safe to say that ninety out of every 
hundred salesmen who fail through lack of in¬ 
dustry will insist that they are hard working. It 
is only human nature that they should. It is a 
perfectly human failing for us to think that we 
are getting every drop of business out of a terri¬ 
tory, and that we are making the most of every 
moment of our time. I say it is natural for us to 
think that way. But if we had the ability to see 
ourselves as others see us we would find that we 
are not nearly so perfect as we imagine we are. 

Be a Hard Task Master 

There is one way to keep on top and that is 
to appoint yourself your own task master. Stop 
sympathizing with yourself. The only time you 
will find yourself abused is when you spend too 
much time thinking about how badly you are 
being treated. Self-sympathy never yet did any¬ 
body any good and it has wrecked the careers of 
many brilliant men. Try to get a disinterested 
outsider's perspective of your work. Instead of 
saying to yourself: “I certainly handled that sit¬ 
uation cleverly” say: “How could I have handled 
that situation even more effectively?” Instead of 
thinking: “I did a great day's work today,” 
think: “What did I do today that could have 
been done better?” 


no 




MAKING THE MOST OP TIME 


Another thing, utilize your spare moments. 
Joe Mitchell Chappie once interviewed James 
Bryce while the latter was British ambassador 
to the United States. As Chappie sat in the 
library at the Embassy waiting to be received, he 
picked up a book and began to read. While he 
was reading Mr. Bryce came in. Chappie re¬ 
marked in an offhand way that he was just 
improving his spare moments, to which the great 
diplomat replied: “That is well said. The 
greatest things in life are accomplished in spare 
moments” 

It was only about ten years ago that the 
president of one of the largest typewriter com¬ 
panies in the world realized that, to the officials 
of his company, he was merely a good salesman, 
little different outwardly from most of the other 
star salesmen. To stand out from the crowd, 
then, it was necessary to add to his present qual¬ 
ifications some qualifications which the other 
salesmen lacked. 

He caught a glimpse of the great export 
market for typewriters and started in to make a 
study of export conditions during his spare 
hours. The officers of the company, ever on the 
lookout for men who know, quickly found out 
that he was posted on export matters. He was 
brought into the Home Office and given a desk. 
The desk soon grew into a department, and when 
ill 




FIELD TACTICS FOR SALESMEN 


the export business finally became the big end 
of the business, he very naturally grew into the 
presidency. 

Take the case of an automobile salesman, 
now sales promotion manager for one of the big 
Detroit companies. Like every salesman, he 
wanted to do something that would force the 
company to recognize his latent ability. He 
figured out that any good salesman could sell 
machines to prospects that were pointed out to 
him, but very few had made a systematic study 
of how automobiles could be used in a commer¬ 
cial way by various lines of business. So he used 
his spare time to discover new prospects. The 
company soon found out he knew, and he was 
promptly jerked into a private office. 

The first step in preparing yourself for an 
executive position with your company is to lay 
the proper foundation. You must have a wide 
knowledge about all sorts of things that have to 
do, even very remotely, with your business. Use 
your spare moments to prepare for a position 
higher up. 


AN 


112 
















































